Archive of Our Own

Our paths diverged long ago. It was affection that held us together.
Goodbye, Jayce.

Viktor will be back, Jayce tells himself, staring blankly at the doorway his best friend, his partner, had just walked through. 

His heart constricts tightly in his chest. He wants, more than anything in the world, to follow. To chase Viktor down and run his hands over the new, metallic skin and reassure himself that Viktor is okay. That there is no bleeding, no broken bones.

He ruthlessly tamps down on the impulse, hands clenching at his sides. Viktor needs space to process the – admittedly extreme – circumstances that lead to Jayce betraying his promise. Giving that space is the very least he can do. Because it is a betrayal, Jayce won’t lie to himself about this. He promised to destroy the hexcore and instead he fused it with Viktor’s broken body (bleeding and fragile and cold oh gods, why is his skin so cold).

There will undoubtedly be consequences. Science and nature rarely get anything right on the first try and while this technically isn’t the first try – the path leading up to this point has been paved with a truly staggering number of dead plants –  it is something completely new. And wholly untested. They had never even been able to get the hexcore to properly fuse with organic material before and now… 

Whatever happens, whatever consequences there are, they’ll face it together. Because Viktor will understand. Viktor has always understood.

Viktor is alive to understand, and that’s all that matters.

Not that Jayce has done the right thing; every single action he has taken in recent memory has objectively been the wrong choice. He can’t even apologize for what he’s done because it would be a lie. He doesn’t regret saving Viktor and, given half the chance, he would do it all over again without a second thought.

He can’t apologize but, with some space, however reluctantly given, Viktor will see. Why he’d broken his promise. Why he’d used the hexcore to keep Viktor alive. It won’t absolve him of the ever compounding number of mistakes he has made, and at this point he’s certain he doesn’t deserve forgiveness anyway, but it’d give them a point upon which to begin rebuilding trust.

It will take some time, but that’s okay. He can devote the rest of his life to making it up to Viktor. They have time now.

With a sigh Jayce turns away from the door and shuffles over to his work table, slumping heavily into his chair. He curls in on himself, hunching his shoulders and bracing his elbows on his knees, and gives himself a moment, face in hands, just to breathe. Viktor is alive, and everything else is secondary. He’s alive.

Jayce sits there, palms pressed firmly into his eye sockets, motes of light dancing across his vision, until he feels the adrenaline slowly subside. And if there is a faint tremor to his hands as he straightens up and wipes his clammy palms across his trousers, no one is around to notice. Viktor has left and Sky is… well. Sky is gone.

Viktor has left and Sky is gone and Jayce is alone.

(For now, he amends. Viktor will be back, Jayce is sure of it.)

He very pointedly does not think about Viktor, bleeding out on the ground, covered in dust and rubble. Does not think about how painfully thin he had been, gathered up in Jayce’s arms, or how light he had felt as Jayce had run, desperate and panicked, from the bombed-out council room to their lab. How small and fragile Viktor had been, or the loop of I can’t lose him, not him, please gods not him —

Instead, Jayce methodically gathers up his notes, carelessly scattered during the argument, and sorts them into neat stacks on his work table. Even though Viktor hadn’t been interested in looking them over just now, he would want to know everything he had missed during his… slumber? Incubation? Stasis?

Jayce frowns, puzzled, and runs a sweat-damp hand through his hair. He isn’t quite sure what the hexcore has done and, running on maybe three hours of interrupted sleep, he’s not sure he could actually grasp the intricacies of the process or its results at the moment anyway. Viktor would know. Would fix his notes later with a crooked smile, and then add his own observations and theories in the margins.

Jayce grabs a mostly-unused journal, tears out the pages he had been using to sketch prototypes, and begins copying down what he remembers from Viktor’s notes about the hexcore. It is incomplete at best and he’s sure that Viktor will laugh at his poor memory later, but it’s enough for now to get started. Then, flipping to a new page, he begins to carefully copy into the journal all of his own (now crumpled) loose notes that Viktor had rejected. Emotions had run high today, understandably so. But he knows Viktor will appreciate having everything in a single place. Later. When the sting of betrayal had faded.

Once all of the loose pages have been transcribed, and the cramping muscle in his hand has been massaged into compliance, Jayce turns to a new page and begins jotting down all of the changes he’d observed in Viktor upon awakening. He is meticulous, writing carefully, neatly, so that there would be no complaints later on about spoiled topsiders who have atrocious handwriting because they have never had to worry about their penmanship. Who didn’t have to make every bit of space count, didn’t have to make sure every word was legible, because they were unable to afford more paper. It's a familiar argument, the grooves and patterns of it well worn. A comfortable argument, even, but Jayce doesn’t want to add any fuel to the fire.

Viktor does not return.

Jayce drifts off into an uneasy sleep at his work bench, hunched protectively over the journal of carefully taken notes as if afraid it would disappear in the night. He wakes later with a sharp gasp, and the taste of Viktor’s name on his tongue. Raw with sleep-induced panic, he turns towards Viktor to reassure himself that his partner is okay, that he’s not bleeding out, and – Viktor is gone.

Viktor has left, and he has not yet returned.

It’s alright, Jayce thinks standing with a wince at the crick in his neck and the ache in his spine. He’ll be back soon. Viktor probably went home to pace. To construct arguments and counter arguments that he would wield against Jayce with surgical precision. He might even have tumbled into bed, exhausted, for a rare night of sleep.

Jayce isn’t particularly knowledgeable about medical science, and is even less knowledgeable about what happened between Viktor and the hexcore, but he does know that recovery is never instant. Regardless of the amount of time Viktor has been unconscious, wrapped in the arcane cocoon, his partner probably needs sleep, and Jayce is happy to let him have it.

Jayce putters quietly around the lab, organizing both of their respective spaces and cleaning up the work tables in a way he had not been able to force himself to do in the wake of the council’s destruction.

When everything had hung in limbo and he hadn’t known if Viktor would survive. 

He copies down Viktor’s old notes from the chalkboard (neatly, carefully), dates them, and adds them to Viktor’s table before wiping the board clean. He puts their tools back onto the cart, wheeling it closer to Viktor’s workstation for ease of access (does Viktor still need them close? He seems to be capable of walking without assistance now, but Jayce doesn’t want to assume. Maybe best to leave it close for now). Then he sweeps the floor, just to give himself something else to do. Once the lab is as clean as he can make it, Jayce wanders over to the kitchenette and makes himself some coffee and Viktor some sweetmilk.

He leaves the mug on Viktor’s table. Drifts back over to the chalkboard and draws a simple anatomical diagram. Maps out the basics of Viktor’s physical changes, sketching the new (improved?) musculature to the best of his memory. Even adds a full head of hair because he knows it’ll make Viktor laugh. He adds and erases theories, but there is only so much he can do without Viktor.

The sweetmilk goes cold, and Viktor does not return.

Days pass, then weeks, and still Viktor does not return.

Jayce can feel himself breaking apart at the seams, curling inward upon himself. Anger comes faster, hotter, and burns longer within him than ever before because it’s easier to be angry. To have something, anything, to direct his feelings at. To have a focus for all of the things he cannot do, cannot say, cannot be.

The anger is easier to handle than the despair. Than the numbness that creeps through his body, making his limbs feel heavy. The weight of his failures threatens to consume him, cavernous and hungry. The ache behind his ribs swells as it waits, and it waits, and it waits.

The council makes a few perfunctory attempts to bring him back into the fold – there is a power imbalance with three members deceased and two gravely injured, and he is the Man of Progress, after all. His involvement in political matters has been a boon to them over the years and they don’t have an abundance of options right now. But after the third time Jayce explodes at the poor fool conned into bringing him yet another summons, there is a single, brief, heated meeting where it is decided that it would be best for everyone involved if he does not return to his former seat.

It’s almost a relief when Mel begins to distance herself, busy with professional duties and obligations, and unwilling to further subject herself to Jayce’s moods. The I didn’t realize you were so close hangs between them. Heavy. Accusing.

So too does he’s like my brother.

Jayce doesn’t begrudge her as she pulls back. Mel has always been an intelligent and ambitious woman, and she can no doubt see that he is faltering, crumbling to pieces right before her eyes. Maybe the others haven’t noticed yet, holed up in the lab as he is, but Jayce knows that this is the end of the line for him. His star can rise no higher with her own, and she deserves more than to be pulled down with him by the weight of his failures.

Maybe in another life he wouldn’t be so foolish as to squander her attention.

Maybe in another life he wouldn’t ruin everything he touched.

Several weeks in, it has become painfully obvious that Viktor won’t be coming back. Jayce has stopped making Viktor’s sweetmilk; stopped leaving it, steam rising, on his table next to the stacks of notes Viktor left behind, each focused on a different project they’d been working on.

Although his hope for his partner’s return has faded, bleeding away at every noise in the hallway that isn’t Viktor, there is one tiny kernel that refuses to die. He knows that if – no longer when, but if – Viktor does finally come back, it will be here, to their lab.

So that’s where Jayce stays.

The lab has a small kitchenette and an attached washroom. He bribes passing students to bring him anything he runs out of or needs – spilling more cogs into grasping palms than the errands are actually worth.

(Jayce becomes exceedingly popular amongst the students who don’t belong to Houses. He is a creature of habit, and they soon figure out which days he’s most likely to crack the lab door open and flag down the first person he sees. Scuffles regularly break out amongst the gathered students, all vying for Runeterra’s easiest job.)

He can’t risk missing Viktor’s return.

So he eats and sleeps in the lab. Folds himself onto the lumpy, too-small sofa they keep in the corner under the single remaining threadbare blanket (if there is one thing Jayce does not regret, it is wrapping Viktor in their good blanket before he left; whatever else Viktor may be, at least he isn’t cold). The sofa had never been intended as more than a temporary refuge for reckless scientists working later into the night than they should – certainly not as a semi-permanent bed for weeks – but Jayce would never forgive himself if Viktor came back, came home, and he missed it for something as foolish as sleep.

He awakes in the middle of the night, squinting blearily up at the lab ceiling, chasing the remnants of a dream where Viktor had finally returned to him and immediately folded into Jayce’s arms. Where they had held each other tightly. Where they had both apologized, speaking over one another in an attempt to be heard. Where they had laughed through the joyful tears of their reunion.

Jayce had known immediately it wasn’t real because it had been Viktor, the dean’s assistant, with his necktie’s grandiose knot and his fluffy cloud of hair and his ability to stand with a cane. But it didn’t matter that it wasn’t real. Because it had been Viktor in his arms. Viktor who had pulled back to look up at Jayce and crack a joke about how stubborn they both were. Viktor who had faded as the dream fizzled out, unable to let Jayce pretend for even a second longer. Viktor who wasn’t here any more. 

Gods but he misses Viktor.

Jayce lurches to his feet, dropping the threadbare blanket back onto the lumpy sofa and stumbles towards the door to the lab without pausing to think about what he’s doing. It’s a breach of privacy, but here in the middle of the night with nothing but the hum of the hanging lights and his own pathetic longing to keep him company, Jayce no longer cares.

He scoops up his keys from where he had carelessly thrown them on the worktable weeks ago and exits the lab, locking up behind him. Jayce staggers sleep-drunk down the hall, out of the building, and through the well-light Piltover streets. It’s a nice night for stargazing, the sky clear and the air crisp, were he interested in such a thing. An even nicer night to drink himself into oblivion beneath the stars, if he thought it would help.

(It never helped; any benefits gained by drinking his feelings away were chased by nightmares where he is back in the council, Viktor’s body fragile and small and so very cold in his arms. In his dreams, he loses Viktor to the explosion. When he wakes, sweating and afraid, he loses him all over again.)

Jayce reaches the nearby housing fairly quickly, a multi-storied building made up of several small apartments. Approaches the first door on the left, just in front of the stairs, dented and worn with age, and slides the key into the lock.

He pushes into the cramped apartment with a quiet grunt, the door stuck after weeks of disuse, and squints into the darkness. The plants are all in varying stages of death – left too long without water or care – and every available surface is covered in haphazard stacks of papers and books that threaten to topple over at even the slightest hint of disturbance.

He stumbles past the piles, opens the door at the end of the small hall, and tips himself into the messy bed. Surrounded by pillows and the faint scent of Viktor, something inside of Jayce finally relaxes. He reaches out, pulling one of the longer pillows close and buries his face into it, inhaling deeply. Chasing the remnants of a ghost.

He does not think about how he was given the key to this apartment in case of emergencies, or how this is a breach of the trust Viktor had shown him. He does not think about how this might look to the council – to Viktor. He does not think at all.

Jayce simply buries himself in Viktor’s nest of pillows and blankets and falls into the first peaceful sleep he’s had in months.

He returns to the lab first thing upon awakening, gripped by the familiar panic at the thought of having missed Viktor’s return. The issue of where he had spent the night adds a layer of guilt that he is not willing to examine so early in the day. What’s done is done. He can atone for his sins later.

The lab is untouched. He knew it would be – if Viktor was going to come back he would’ve done so by now. Relief floods through him anyway, bittersweet in its arrival.

Feeling more refreshed than he has any right to, Jayce dives back into the books he has borrowed from the library (by proxy) about different kinds of metals. Despite his background in metalworking the purple metal that now made up Viktor’s body had been foreign to him. 

He’s in the middle of adding an addendum in the margins of his notes – purple in runes means sorcery, so maybe it isn’t a naturally occurring metal at all but one created entirely from sorcery? the familiar itch to begin running tests on what could be a completely new metal, previously unseen on Runeterra seizes him – when a series of increasingly suspicious noises derail his train of thought.

He gets up and follows them. Discovers that they’re originating from underneath the lab, and are foreign enough that he knows it isn’t Viktor. Is someone trying to… break in? Could it be like the attack during the memorial? Would the chem-barons target his lab?

Foolish question. Renni may be dead, but Jayce has done the unforgivable (child-killer, his mind whispers, as if he needs the reminder; as if it doesn’t haunt him). He has painted a target on his back, on hextech’s back, with the blood of the innocent.

It’s really only a surprise that they haven’t come for him sooner, if he thinks about it. And while he would deserve to meet his end at the hands of the people he has wronged, would welcome it, even, he can’t die just yet. He has to know that Viktor is okay, first; that he’ll continue to be okay, even after Jayce is gone.

He grabs the Mercury Hammer and waits for his attackers.

It’s an even bigger surprise when the intruder turns out to be Heimerdinger, and not a chem-baron after all.

(Were you… sleeping here? Heimerdinger asks, eyeing the rumpled sofa and Jayce’s precarious stack of dirty mugs and plates. He ignores the question. Embarrassing as it is to be caught by his former professor, the humiliation would be unbearable if he were to inadvertently blurt out where he had actually been last night in a misguided attempt to defend himself.)

He swells with pride as Viktor’s theory of wild runes is proven correct. It was a theory they had argued frequently, especially in the early days of hextech. It made sense for there to be a reaction to the use of the arcane, especially when forcefully creating magic through non-magical means. They just hadn’t been able to find – hadn’t been able to see – any evidence of the wild runes, or even any other kind of reaction outside of the occasional instability. Creating the hexgates had been an exercise in constantly looking over their proverbial shoulders, waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the action to finally cause a discernible reaction. But there hadn’t been one.

Or, rather, there hadn’t been a visible one.

Jayce can now see the reaction, can see the wild rune and the extent of their hubris, visible at last, as the corruption creeps out from the base of the hexgate. They have pushed the arcane too far, too hard, and here is the reckoning. Tangible proof that even the greatest of his achievements is little more than a failure in the end.

(What have we done? he asks, horrified, as he reaches for the wild rune; as he thinks about the corruption, spreading without their knowledge through the air and water ducts until it reaches the undercity. Blighting Ekko’s tree and the gods only know what else. The air ducts. Gods.)

And then the wild rune expands, fracturing Jayce’s consciousness into a million little pieces. He can feel his essence broken down into grains of sand, pieces of stardust, ready to reintegrate back into the universe. The pain alternates between excruciating, burning white-hot and ripping through every nerve in his body, and dissipating entirely, leaving him floating through the abyss. He is broken and rebuilt hundreds of times, thousands of times, before he is dropped into a world so foreign that it assaults his senses on every level.

The bile rises quickly, burning its way up Jayce’s throat and through his sinuses, and he heaves until there is nothing left.

His palms press further into the ground with every shudder and the dewy chill seeps into his fingers. The cold is a small relief as waves of heat ripple through his body, punctuated by a roll of nausea. Jayce digs his fingers into the dirt and heaves himself upright. Blinks away the vertigo and reaches for his hammer. The familiar weight in his hands grounds him.

But the comfort of having the Mercury Hammer in hand is short-lived. As he tries to activate it he realizes the hexgem has either broken or short-circuited during the wild rune’s impromptu teleportation; it won’t be able to channel the arcane until he can get back to the lab to replace it.

A glance around doesn’t help pinpoint where the wild rune has dropped him – the atmosphere is blanketed in green-tinted fog, looking so much like the grey he helped unleash on the undercity that his hands tremble (a small body, limp and broken and innocent, what has he done). The fog lends a suffocating dampness to the air that makes every breath drawn feel thick, heavy, like drowning in slow motion. And in the distance, the echo of something that could have either been an explosion or the roar of a creature.

He follows the sound on impulse, leaving behind his hammer and any sense of self-preservation or common sense, until he sees a silhouette in the fog, both familiar and strange. The robe flashes, a beacon of white in the grey-green colorscape, and Jayce finds himself running, legs shaky and colt-like, across the uneven rocky terrain. Desperate to catch up to the figure perpetually just out of reach.

(Did you bring me here? He calls out to the figure, confused. Where are we? There is no reply; if not for the sour taste of bile in the back of his throat and the way he feels an uncomfortable buzzing across his skin, like thousands of bees, he’d think this just another one of the many dreams he has had about the mage over the years.)

Instead of catching up, the figure dissipates into nothingness and Jayce skids to a halt before the crumbling remains of a statue. It’s an impressive study of motion: arm outstretched, desperately reaching forward, legs captured mid-sprint, mouth twisted open in a perpetual scream. And it is covered in an nauseatingly familiar circular pattern – the corruption of wild runes. Horror bleeds through every fibre of his being as he looks at the holes in the statue’s skull. Looks through the holes in the skull – oh gods this isn’t a statue, this is a person – and spies a city in the distance.

He pushes past the ruined body, stumbling forward only to find himself standing at a precipice, staring out at a decaying wasteland. Buildings flattened as if they were mere toys, stomped on by a petulant child. The green fog brushes through the destruction, weaving corruption into the very heart of the city formerly known at Piltover.

And in the center of it all, the only construct not flattened or listing precariously to the side, is the hexgate. It stands tall in the eye of the storm, a monument surrounded by thick, billowing green clouds.

The final testament to the hubris of man.

There is a pull deep within his chest that steers Jayce. It compels him to his feet, has him grabbing his (now, ordinary) hammer, and picking his way through the ruins and rubble on the outskirts of the city. He cannot say exactly what he is being led towards, only that he is being led. Deeper into the city. Deeper into the corruption.

The rain falls heavier the closer he gets; the gentle mist of the city outskirts gives way to a steady drizzle. Not yet a true downpour, though he can see the darker clouds smudging the horizon and knows it is only a matter of time before it picks up. 

Jayce makes his way slowly through a residential district and discovers that the gutted, skeletal remains of buildings that were shocking from a distance are utterly devastating up close. Most of the homes are open to the elements – doors and walls missing – and show the forgotten remnants of the lives once housed within, abruptly paused. Tables set with an unfinished meal, long since rotted away. Laundry hung out to dry, now moldering and tattered beyond recognition. Toys, set out for playtime, scattered, broken into pieces amongst debris.

Here, the corruption touches everything. It creeps along the streets and up walls. Consumes some structures whole, while brushing its tendrils sparingly along others. There is very little remaining that doesn’t have some hint of the corruption’s spiral pattern upon it, and Jayce wonders how long it has taken for it to spread this far. Wonders if it is still spreading. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before even the bones of Piltover are consumed.

And all of it, empty. Entirely devoid of life. It’s not until he’s left the residential district that he finally starts to see the husks of people. It had been disquieting to not see a single soul as he had passed through, but here they are, gathered en masse in the outskirts of the market district.

The forest of bodies grows denser and denser leading up, and spilling into, the train. It is filled to the brim with people, packed like sardines in a tin. There are several, trapped forever in the middle of scaling the metal siding, trying to claw their way into the carriage through the windows. The train, overcrowded and certainly over-encumbered, sits there, welded to the tracks by a sickeningly familiar pattern.

They had been trying to flee the city.

Whatever had happened here, it was clear that the people had just enough time to know that everything had gone horribly wrong, but not enough time to actually escape.

He weaves through the remains carefully, trying not to touch anyone even though they are clearly long gone. The feeling of being watched trickles uneasily down his spine. Jayce looks for the source of his discomfort, eyes skipping between the husks and buildings and back again, but he can find nothing aside from the decaying ruins of humanity. And himself. Jayce ducks his head, and tightens his grip on the hammer. Ignores the feeling.

It’s a struggle to keep putting one foot in front of another; the adrenaline has worn off and exhaustion has sunk deep into the marrow of his bones, dulling the edges of the persistent dread that has chased him through the city. Hunger gnaws at his empty stomach – the meagre contents strewn outside of Piltover like offerings to the long-absent gods of the realm – making the tremor in his hands worse.

But there is nothing here. No food, no people, no shelter. He could tuck himself under the lip of a crumbling bridge, but Jayce knows that if he stops here, if he lays down his hammer and gives himself a chance to catch his breath, he won’t get back up. He’ll sit for a second to rest his bones, close his eyes, and slip away. The corruption will creep up from the ground and spread across his body until too becomes an indistinguishable husk, crumbling to dust. Forgotten. Alone.

Jayce wipes the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand and trudges on. Follows that indescribable pull deep in his chest towards whatever is beckoning, calling him forward.

Until something shifts in the periphery. 

The movements are small at first. Always at the edge of his vision, just slightly out of view. He’d think he was imagining them if not for the occasional clink of metal from the direction of the movement. Just enough to reassure him he’s not losing it. Just enough to be deeply unsettling.

Something else moves on the floor above him and Jayce freezes as it detaches from the wall and scuttles out of sight. Unease wells up, sitting heavy in the pit of his stomach. He scans the rest of the floor, desperately trying to catch sight of whatever it was, but it’s gone and everything falls still once more.

Behind him a loud crack shatters the silence. Stopping was a mistake, he understands with dawning horror as he turns to look at the source of the noise – the body behind him shudders as it rips itself from the corruption that has fused it to the ground, movements jerky after (weeks? years? decades?) of disuse.

Jayce shouts in alarm, stumbling away from the body – not a person he realizes, but a smooth human-like mechanical creature – only to find that it’s not the only one breaking out of its stasis. The cracking noise grows, louder and louder to an overwhelming pitch as they wrench themselves free one by one, heads swiveling towards Jayce.

He doesn’t know what they are or what they’re capable of, but he knows with a deep-seated certainty that he doesn’t want these creatures to catch him.

Jayce spins on his heel, hefts the hammer over his shoulder, and bolts.

It’s a mad dash, weaving through the frozen bodies and rubble as he hears the crash of the creatures behind him, following with increasing speed. They are single-minded in their pursuit, with no regard for the husks they tear through as they reach for him. Hands grasping, seeking, snagging the edge of his clothing.

Fear makes a fool of Jayce, and he risks a glance behind him at the increasing number of creatures joining the chase. That split second of lost focus costs him dearly. There is a fallen piece of iron, previously part of the overhead stairway, that he doesn’t see. His foot catches the edge of it and sends him stumbling forward, propelled by inertia and the downward slope of the landscape.

Before Jayce can catch himself he is tumbling through flowers and grass and rocks – the garden next to the market his brain supplies unhelpfully – and then down, off the side of the hill into a sheer drop.

His hammer, lost in the confusion, finds his left leg with the assistance of gravity and divine humor. The bone snaps. The hammer drops through a crack in the rocky cliffside, and Jayce’s body tumbles after it. Down, down, down, bouncing off the sharp jutting edges like a rag doll, until finally landing with a sickening thump.

Oblivion swallows Jayce whole.

There is a ringing in his ears, loud and insistent, that ruthlessly drags Jayce from the depths of unconsciousness.

The back of his head throbs and a rock digs painfully into his cheek, but chill from the ground almost feels like a blessing. Soothing, when every single part of his body aches.

With a groan Jayce drags his palms forward and heaves himself up. There is only a split second of blissful ignorance before the pain ricochets up his leg, blindingly white-hot and all-consuming. He falls back to the ground with a hoarse shout that echoes throughout the cavern as sweat dampens his forehead.

He doesn’t know where he ended up, sprawled out and panting on the cavern floor as he is; just that it is down, and he needs very much to be up.

Jayce quickly discovers that his leg is broken and he cannot put any amount of weight on it. This knowledge does not come from a lack of trying. He knows it’s stupid. You can’t just will a broken body into working. If it was that simple Viktor would never have needed a cane, much less a crutch. Would never have suffered through lungs ravaged by illness, turning each breath into a wet death-rattle by the end. Would never have started curling in on himself, hunched and fragile, as his organs threatened failure.

Jayce still tries to climb the walls of his new prison. Drags himself across the ground on his forearms, teeth clenched against every jolt of movement, agony searing through his veins. Reaches ever upward, finding handholds in the uneven cavernous walls and pulls himself up. His muscles strain under the effort and he tries to keep the weight off of his left leg. He can manage to climb up a little higher than standing height, but inevitably either his arms give out or he accidentally tries to put weight on his left leg, and he falls back to the ground, landing in a graceless heap of bones and blinding pain.

Jayce has always been a stubborn man. He knows that he is useless in his current state. Knows that he’s running purely on fumes at the moment and that he has been too long without proper sustenance (when did he last eat? he hadn’t had breakfast this morning – Viktor’s apartment was sparse on food at the best of times and the icebox had been empty aside from a container of sweetmilk and a half-eaten jar of pickled tomatoes after weeks of neglect). 

He knows he does not have the energy required to scale the wall, particularly not with a broken leg.

He keeps trying anyway.

Keeps pushing himself until his nails are ripped and his hands are bleeding from a million tiny cuts. Keeps going until his muscles are burning, strained well beyond their limits, and he can feel the threat of tearing if he continues. Keeps going until he lands just perfectly wrong on his broken leg. The pain that shoots through his veins is so blinding that his vision darkens around the edges, and he expels the miniscule amount of liquid remaining in his stomach.

Jayce lays on the cool stone floor, shivering with overexertion, and passes out once more.

Jayce is a stubborn man, but generally not a stupid one. He acknowledges defeat the next time he wakes, as the mindless panic subsides and reason takes hold. He cannot force his way out of here with brute-strength alone, and even if he was able to crawl out… then what?

He hadn’t noticed the first time he awoke, but several of the creatures that had chased him are clustered around the crevice he had fallen through. They have no eyes – no facial features at all, really – but in spite of that, they seem to be taking turns peering down at him. Watching from their higher perch, but unwilling to join him in the depths.

Jayce watches them in return. Notes their jerky movements and the way their heads tilt to the side as if studying him. The metallic tapping against the stone as they rotate through sentinel duty. In a landscape that has been so hideously devoid of any sign of life, he could almost appreciate the company of seemingly sentient humanoid creatures.

Almost.

There is a small pool of water near where he so unceremoniously landed. The source of the water is not immediately apparent, although it is undoubtedly helped along by runoff dripping from the stalactites. He doesn’t know very much about the natural world (his interest had always lain with the arcane, which is arguably more along the lines of unnatural for someone like him with no innate magical prowess), but he does know that a still body of water is generally not considered safe for drinking, and he can’t see any kind of movement or ripples in the water with the miniscule amount of light filtering in through the ceiling.

Stagnant water is bad but, unfortunately, he has no other options. He drinks anyway.

It tastes strange – a little chalky and, frankly, a lot like licking a rock. The first mouthful stings the irritated parts of his throat on the way down. The second is much better received, the cool liquid soothing the previous irritation and easing the feeling of cottonmouth. He takes small, careful sips, rationing the water in spite of the overwhelming desire to drink until his belly is full. He has no idea how long he’ll be down here or how long this water will last. 

Thankfully the water appears to be free of contaminants.  Maybe he’ll be lucky (for the first time today) and it won’t be full of bacteria waiting to kill him.

Or maybe deadly bacteria would be the real luck at this point. A swift end would be better than slowly wasting away in a crack in the ground.

Jayce has lived an admittedly charmed life outside of the blizzard from his childhood. House Talis is not especially wealthy, they’ve always been more of a working class family than part of the upper class, but House Talis is still a recognized House of Piltover. They’ve never had to figure out how to stretch every last cog and washer, or choose between food and medicine. Never had to fight tooth and nail for resources or wonder where they’ll find shelter for the night. 

All of this to say, Jayce knows very little about real survival. He had a brief stint in his childhood where, in the wake of his mother losing her fingers, he consumed every scrap of information he could get his hands on about how to survive during a blizzard. He knows how to melt down snow for water, and how to layer clothing. Knows to stay out of the wind, and how quickly frostbite can set in.

Absolutely none of which prepares him for the situation that he has found himself in. Instead he thinks of the pieces of himself that Viktor has shared over the years, doled out sparingly and with a great deal of trust. Pieces that Jayce trained himself into not reacting to, lest Viktor misconstrue his horror as judgement.

Like Viktor subsisting on gutter rats and insects during some very fraught years as a boy. Viktor playing alone near the chem runoff. Viktor wrapping and setting broken bones for his parents in the aftermath of the riots (he hadn’t gone into great detail, and Jayce hadn’t wanted to press too hard at the bruise of these childhood memories).

His recollection of Viktor’s experiences will have to serve as a guide down here in the depths where Jayce has no knowledge of his own to go off of.

He sets himself to work ripping strips of cloth from his coattails, assisted by a rock with a particularly jagged edge. He lays them out neatly on the ground and chooses the cleanest amongst them, carefully setting aside the extras in a tidy stack for later. He wishes he could wash the fabric with soap first or, at the very least, rinse it off, but he can’t risk contaminating his only water supply.

He steels himself, grits his teeth, and before he can give himself time to think about it, Jayce pushes the bone sticking out of his leg – pale white and jagged and covered in blood – back into place. He screams, a raw, animalistic sound that echoes off the cavern walls as he’s blinded by the worst pain he has ever felt. The edges of his vision grow dark and unconsciousness once again takes hold.

When he wakes, the pain is still hot and bright, radiating out of his leg to every single part of his body. He breathes deeply, timing each inhale and exhale. Once he feels a little more steady he reaches a shaking hand out and grabs the cloth he set aside, wrapping his leg as tightly as he can bear. He ties the knot firmly over the wound, and tries not to think about how he’ll need to change out the cloth later (or how much it will hurt). He doesn’t exactly have an unlimited amount of fabric to create bandages from and, while washing them for reuse would be ideal, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to collect enough rainwater runoff.

Still. For now, he has done all he can.

One of the first things recommended in his blizzard survival books, right after finding shelter, is to build up a fire while you still have the function of your fingers. He may not be trapped in a blizzard, but the advice still seems applicable enough. This deep into the earth there is a chill that is not yet uncomfortable, but might be given time. And while the cavern he currently finds himself in is enclosed on all sides, he can’t rule out the possibility that one of the creatures might finally abandon caution and crawl down in here after him. Fire is usually a deterrent, right?

Maybe logic doesn’t apply to whatever those things are.

He’d still feel better with a fire.

Scavenging around the cavern unearths a more sizable collection of potential kindling than Jayce had expected, and he’s able to get a small fire going with little fuss. There is really nowhere down here for the fire to go, but he occupies himself for a while by carefully picking the nicest rocks to put around the perimeter of the fire for containment.

Viktor would probably laugh if he could see Jayce fiddling with the placement of his rocks. Would probably admonish him for favoring form over function, tsking in annoyance before changing out Jayce’s selections with rocks far better suited for the task of containment.

(You can’t just pick them because you think they look nice, Jayce, Viktor would grumble, deftly plucking the small, beautifully smooth rocks from the circle and replacing them with larger, sturdier rocks. They have to serve a purpose! To protect the fire from wind! To reflect the heat back inwards! To direct the smoke! He would brandish one of the pleasantly small, rounded rocks accusingly in Jayce’s direction, How have you survived this long without knowing the basics?)

Even in his head, Viktor is a voice of reason. Jayce changes out his rocks for the ones he feels certain that Viktor would pick. But keeps one for himself, running the pads of his fingers over the smooth texture.

Something about the way the firelight reflects off of it reminds him of Viktor’s eyes.

Jayce gets lucky and manages to catch an overly-curious salamander despite his lack of mobility. It doesn’t make any attempt to escape his grasp, and that is somehow so much worse than if it had fought him. 

If it had scratched him, if it had bit and clawed, he could’ve justified killing it. Could’ve chalked this up to a fight for survival between the both of them, where he had been the one to emerge victorious.

Instead his throat constricts as it looks up at him, eyes wide with trust. It burrows into his hands with a little shimmy, as if getting comfortable, and then relaxes. Luxuriates in the warmth of Jayce’s palm. Its skin is cool to the touch, a little rubbery, and Jayce’s fingers stutter over its spine as he strokes it gently. 

It is so small. So fragile and innocent and trusting. He looks down at this sweet salamander in his palms and knows he can’t do it.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, eyes stinging as he brings it up to his face and presses his forehead gently against its skin. The salamander wriggles away from the contact, leaping free and scuttling back up the cavern wall. “I’m so, so sorry.”

Fever from the infection sets in, heralded by chattering teeth and intense shivers that wrack his entire body. It was really only a matter of time. The wound on his leg had mercifully stopped bleeding – he hadn’t wanted to think about what he’d do if he couldn’t stop the bleeding – but the skin surrounding it has become swollen and angry.

Jayce drags himself to the pool and chokes some water down. I know you are not thirsty, he can almost hear Viktor scold, Drink it anyway. He swallows through the sharp pain in his throat as his body tries to reject the liquid. Gives himself a couple seconds to make sure the water stays down. When it doesn’t try to reappear he crawls over to the fire with a quiet wheeze, adds some additional branches, and curls in on himself. Within minutes he drifts into restless slumber. 

It feels like someone has taken a screwdriver to his temple and is twisting it through his flesh, inch by excruciating inch. An ice pick would be quicker, Jayce thinks fuzzily. Would just pierce straight through the delicate skin and put him out of his misery. Instead, he is left with a persistent ache scraping along the inside of his skull.

The pain makes it hard to sleep, to think, to exist. Jayce shifts restlessly. Attempts to roll onto his side until pain shoots up his leg. Squints blearily at the cavern wall. Watches the shadows cast by the fire flicker until the weight of his eyelids and the burden of wakefulness are too much to bear.

Sweat-soaked hair is brushed gently away from his forehead, and the press of a cool water-damp cloth is a relief. Rest, Viktor murmurs.

Jayce reaches out, grasping blindly until his fingers brush against the smooth rock that had sparkled so beautifully in the firelight, reminding him of Viktor. He cradles it carefully against his chest, runs his fingers gently across the satin surface, and slips back into darkness.

The fever breaks. This discovery is uncelebrated, weak and trembling as Jayce still is, but he lives to see another day. For now.

He laboriously pulls himself to the pool of water and drinks slowly despite the persistent ache in his stomach and violent tremor in his hands. His clothes stick uncomfortably to his skin with the remnants of his fever sweat and he imagines flinging his broken body into the water for an ill-advised bath. It would be a sweet relief to rinse the sweat and grime off. To feel human. 

Ignoring the impulse, Jayce takes stock. It’s unclear just how long he has been delirious with fever, time is nebulous when you’re trapped underground with no real access to sunlight, but it has been long enough for his fire to have gone out. The ashes are cold to the touch as he pokes them. There is still enough kindling and supplies to build it back up for now, though he’s not sure how long those supplies will hold out.

Viktor would probably know.

It is the universe’s greatest joke to have made forge-work such an integral part of his life, made fire such an integral part of his life, only for Jayce to struggle with creating and maintaining a fire now without the comforts and shortcuts of civilization. 

The hunger scrapes through his insides until he is nothing more than a shell of a human, cavernous and hollow. Bones and blood and intestines all replaced with a yawning void that has sapped his strength and stolen his concentration. He can think of nothing but food. Feels keenly every minute that has passed since he last ate. The void will steal this hunger too, soon enough. And then it will steal him, swallow him whole, and scatter his remains across the floor of this cavern. 

A fitting end for the so-called Man of Progress.

Don’t be foolish, Jayce, Viktor says. You must eat something. The salamander will not thank you for sparing its life.

Jayce grits his teeth and passes his thumb over the smooth curve of his rock. Viktor tsks in annoyance.

Don’t you dare die Jayce Talis, you insufferable man. Eat.

Viktor’s hiss pierces through the fog in his brain and Jayce looks up from where he has been slumped against the cavern wall. The ache of hunger has faded and a chill has taken its place, creeping in and settling itself deep in his bones. 

“‘M sorry,” Jayce slurs weakly as another shiver wracks his body.

Then do something about it!

He does. The salamanders remain too-trusting and he’s never been able to refuse Viktor.

Something within him shatters; breaks into jagged little pieces. He hemorrhages self-loathing as he takes his first bite of meat, fresh from the fire. And then the hunger takes over, ravenous and all-consuming. He finishes the meal – his first in so long – in three bites.

Viktor’s hum of approval is a balm against the bruised parts of his soul that remain.

He catches sight of the mage out of the corner of his eye. They stand in the shadows, looking down at Jayce with what he imagines to be pity. The mage saved his life all those years ago and for what? All he has contributed to the world is greed, death, and destruction. After all of his struggling, all of his failed attempts to do something that matters, here he is, ready to meet his end in the depths of Runeterra where no one will ever find him. No one will mourn him.

“Wait,” he croaks, voice rusty with disuse. The sound of it is a shock after being alone for so long. He reaches a hand out toward the mage, but in the blink of an eye they vanish.

The silence settles back into place like a fog, thick and oppressive and smothering. He will drown in it, choking on all of the words left unsaid. To Viktor. To his mother.

He can’t let the silence build up again or he will go mad.

Perhaps he already is.

“I don’t know how you do it,” he says. Disgusted.

Silence is peaceful, Viktor huffs a laugh.

There is nothing peaceful about being left alone in the dark with only your regrets for company.

The peal of Mel’s laugh rings out as a small group of salamanders do something to amuse her in his periphery. Jayce ignores them, unwrapping his leg to check on the wound. The cloth pulls away slowly, putting up a curious hint of resistance. As he reaches the end he can see why. Arcane corruption has set into the wound and it stretches between the rotting flesh and the fabric.

I didn’t know it could do that, Mel peers over his shoulder as he tries to mop up the thick fluid. 

“Neither did I,” Jayce admits. He should be horrified. This is definitely a bad development. But really at this point, what is one more misfortune heaped upon his head? He deserves it. The wild rune, the arcane corruption – it’s all his fault.

Ever the scientist, curiosity propels him forward. He studies the corruption, noting the difference in colors and viscosity. It's behaving in a way he hasn’t seen before. He is working from an admittedly small sample size, but even still. Is it perhaps organic versus non-organic material…? But no, Ekko’s leaf hadn’t…

Interesting, Viktor agrees with the tilt of his head. 

Jayce pulls the soiled fabric away, having wiped up as much of it as he can. Cups water in his hands and uses it to gently clean out the traces of corruption that remains before wrapping his leg in a new strip of fabric. Thinks about the corruption. The patterns in the corruption.

“What if this is a different variant?” says Jayce.

Can the arcane have different variants? What would cause the difference? asks Mel.

Mutations, muses Viktor, are usually evolutionary reactions to the environment. He pauses. Well, successful mutations anyway. 

“Right,” Jayce says, squinting upwards. One of the figures skitters sideways out of sight and two more take its place. They stare sightlessly down at him. “And this has been a very different environment since I–” Jayce waves his hand vaguely. Does not bother to finish the sentence. “Are we in the future?”

That seems like a reasonable enough hypothesis, Viktor shrugs. We have no way to test it, though.

“Assuming we are – yes I know, Viktor,” Jayce says, cutting off the squawked protest he knows is coming about assuming, “But assuming we are in the future, that means that the arcane corruption had enough time to mutate. And for that mutation to spread.”

Which means? Mel prompts as Viktor mutters angrily.

Jayce slumps. “I don’t know yet.”

He maneuvers painfully to his feet and hobbles over to the largest, smoothest part of the cavern wall. Grabs one of the many discarded rocks from his first attempt at fire building and drags it across the surface.

It takes a bit of work, but he’s able to scratch the beginnings of a hypothesis into the stone. Stepping back to look at it, Jayce feels a familiar itch at the back of his brain; the need to deconstruct a problem until he can figure out how it works. How to solve it.

“It’s a start.”

With time, killing the salamanders gets easier – and he hates it. Hates that taking a life, no matter how small, has become routine.

His chest still constricts painfully every single time he is forced to kill, but his hands know what to do now and move swiftly of their own accord. It’s almost a relief that he no longer has to think about it. It’s also a burden, and every life he takes weighs heavily on his shoulders.

Maybe he will survive this, but is it worth the cost? Is his life really worth more than the sweet, trusting creatures he consumes?

The snap of fragile bones is quiet, a whisper on the breeze. For Jayce, it rings loudly in his ears. Plays in a loop he cannot shut out no matter how hard he tries. Snap. Snap. Snap.

The tears no longer come. 

Jayce presses his knuckle firmly into the tendons in his neck and winces. There is a flash of pain, followed by sweet relief. He drops his hand from his neck and takes a few hobbled steps backward to stare up at the wall.

His eyes ache, dry and gritty and feeling like they’re coated in a fine layer of sand. There is a dull throbbing coursing through his head, beating against the shores of his skull in insistent waves, and his ears feel like they have been stuffed full of cotton, muting all sounds except for the protracted ringing in his ears. It makes it harder to catch Viktor’s muttering.

They’ve been working nonstop, writing and rewriting, theorizing and speculating. Cataloging their observations of the corruption that had infected Jayce’s leg, and has in turn been slowly breaking down his hammer. Watching the slow creep of corrosion has been equal parts fascinating and horrifying.

Can the corruption break down all existing matter? Will it, given time?

He doesn’t know when he last slept – but how can he possibly sleep when he finally has his partner standing by his side, pointing out the inaccuracies in his equations and gleefully poking holes in theories? He has missed this, missed Viktor, so much.

He stands there, stance shifted to keep the weight off his bad leg as he looks at their work. Looks at Viktor who is pointing at something Jayce had scribbled onto their makeshift chalkboard last night (or perhaps the day before – time is difficult to track here, and forfeiting sleep in the pursuit of science has not made that task any easier). Viktor gestures emphatically as he talks to Jayce about the scrawled hypothesis with gleaming, manic eyes and wild hair, looking every bit like the mad scientist that Mel had laughingly called them on occasion. He is heart-breakingly beautiful like this, full of passion and knowledge and life.

There is ache in Jayce’s chest he cannot explain; a band wrapped around his ribcage that keeps tightening. A scream trapped at the back of his throat. 

He ignores it and moves forward to rejoin Viktor.

Jayce rubs his palm into his chest directly above his heart, trying to relieve the pressure building there. The ache is sharp, piercing straight through the muscle and bone. Bile rises at the back of his throat.

I never asked for any of this, he remembers pleading. The words echo through his memory, mocking. How foolish he must have sounded. How petulant. As if anyone ever asks for hardship and suffering.

The bile burns as it crawls up his throat. Hits the back of his tongue. Jayce wrenches himself away from his small fire and the pool of water, twisting to brace his arm against the cool, rough surface of one of the cavern walls, and heaves.

Mercifully the only thing he throws up is water mixed with spit. He hasn’t eaten recently, so at least he hasn’t wasted food. Jayce wipes the back of his hand across his mouth and straightens.

What had Mel said? Something about the era of magic?

What a joke.

Being partners with Viktor taught Jayce years ago that the human body has limitations that neither of them can surpass, no matter how hard they may have tried. There is only so long one can go without sleep before the body simply refuses to function and shuts down.

Jayce works feverishly; it’s like he has gone back in time, early in his partnership with Viktor, and they’re neglecting food and sleep to just chase one more problem. One more solution. 

He draws the wild rune. Presses one of his rocks firmly into the wall and tries to recreate it as accurately as possible with the limited tools at his disposal, following the bold lines and swirls. The wild rune is somehow both organic in its creation and arcane. It would be beautiful in its fusion of the natural and magical if it wasn’t for– if it hadn’t–

Well.

Jayce scratches at his beard, along the underside of his jaw, and surveys his work with a jaw-cracking yawn. It is a good likeness, Viktor murmurs, pressing his hand into Jayce’s shoulder. 

Jayce reaches up to clasp the man’s hand in his own with a quiet “Thanks, V.”

A single tear falls, tracing the curve of Jayce’s cheek before dashing itself upon the ground, unnoticed.

Jayce hobbles over to the fire and sits, suddenly exhausted. Pulls his good knee up to his chest and rests his chin on it, making himself small in a way he hasn’t since he was young and trying to hide from the snow storm raging just outside his window.

(He had known he was safe inside, known that the snow couldn’t slip in through the cracks to grab him or his mother; couldn’t snatch them from their beds to reclaim the lives stolen from its grasp. He had known, but the fear had overtaken him, driving him to flee into his closet; squished down as small as possible, wrapped in the blanket from his bed, trying desperately to tune out the howling wind.)

Jayce stares into the fire. Reaches into his pocket and palms the smooth rock kept safely within, comforted by the weight of it. He has kept it close ever since he woke from the fever with it still clenched firmly in his fist. Within moments the lack of sleep catches up to him and he drifts off.

Suffocating heat presses at Jayce. Rivulets of sweat roll down his spine as flames encircle him, towering high above and licking at him from all sides. Fire moves fast, he knows, and It’s only a matter of time before it leaps forward and consumes him.

Jayce drags a heavy hand across his brow, wiping sweat from his eyes and glancing around in search of an exit.

His eyes skip over the fallen columns and charred beams and destroyed walls until –

Oh gods.

Jayce darts forward, his heart in his throat, and tears frantically at the rubble, cutting his hands on the jagged edges. He heaves, pulling the last block of concrete away and stares down in horror at Mel’s crumpled body. Blood streams down her face from a gash at her temple. Her usually warm skin is cold and ashen beneath his trembling fingertips.

“No,” Jayce whispers hoarsely. He falls to the ground, knees digging painfully into the rocks and debris. Cradles her limp wrist and tries to find a pulse.

She’s gone – he’s failed her. 

Jayce presses the back of her hand, now ice-cold, to his forehead and closes his eyes. Shudders.

How has this happened? How has he lost another person he cares for? And how many more must he lose before there is no one left for him to save?

Gods, he’s got to get Mel out of here. He can’t just leave her behind to save himself. She deserves better than that. Has always deserved better than anything Jayce has been able to offer. He will not let the bombed-out ruins of the council room be her final resting place.

Jayce grits his teeth, choking back the grief that threatens to overwhelm him, and opens his eyes. Glances around at the encroaching flames. How is he going to…?

Something catches in the corner of his eye and Jayce looks down in confusion at the pale hand he’s holding. Follows the curve of the wrist up into the familiar striped shirt, darkened with soot. Up the line of the arm to  –

“Viktor,” Jayce breathes. His palms grow clammy with dawning horror as he carefully reaches a shaking hand out to cup Viktor’s cheek. His eyelashes are a delicate smudge against the dark circles of exhaustion and hauntingly pale, fragile skin. Rivulets of blood cut a stark path through Viktor’s hair, matting it against his skull.

Tremors wrack Jayce’s body as he gently reaches out and pulls Viktor from the debris. He lays him carefully on the ground and smooths the blood-damp hair away from Viktor’s face. Rubs a thumb against the curve of his cheekbone to wipe away the dirt. And something inside of Jayce shatters.

He gathers Viktor in his arms, holds him tightly. He buries his face into the curve of Viktor’s shoulder, dampening the fabric, and howls his grief, a broken, wet sound ripped straight from his chest.

It’s not supposed to be like this. It was never supposed to be like this. They were meant to be partners – to be together, two halves of a whole – until they were old and their hair was shot through with grey. Meant to continue working, to continue living, side-by-side. To create and invent and improve the lives of others.

His place, his home, is with Viktor. He knows that now.

It’s too little, too late.

Jayce presses his palm into the curve of Viktor’s spine, into the brace he can feel through Viktor’s shirt. Cradles Viktor in his arms as the tears spill from his eyes, and he rocks back and forth trying desperately to think of something, anything, he can do to fix this. To make things right.

He can’t lose Viktor. He can’t.

“Please, Viktor,” Jayce begs, wrecked. “Please don’t leave me.”

The flames rush forward and swallow them both.

Jayce wakes with a gasp, fingers spasming around his rock. His small fire flickers; a draft slinks through the cavern from the opening above. He looks away from the flames, cannot bear to see it right now, and exhales shakily.

It was just a dream.

Viktor survived.

Viktor survived and he needs to get back.

Jayce looks over at the Mercury Hammer, sitting exactly where it had landed however long ago now, corroded over time by the arcane’s corruption and Jayce’s apathy. It is still largely intact, despite everything.

He can use it.

Stripping the hammer for parts ends up being easier than anticipated. Jayce had been afraid he would need to figure out how to create tools, but the corruption had eaten away at several important joints and he’d been able to effectively rip the hammer apart with his bare hands. 

With the scavenged parts in hand he sets out to create a leg brace for himself, similar to the ones he’d built for Viktor. He has come up with several prototypes over the years (although it took months to talk Viktor into letting him actually build and refine them), so he feels fairly confident in his ability to throw something serviceable together. 

The result is imperfect – there is no way for him to create a properly fitted brace with the materials at hand – but it is functional.

After a few test laps around the cavern and some adjustments to where the metal sits, Jayce takes a fortifying breath and once again begins to climb.

It is slow going, and he has to take frequent breaks. He’s much weaker now than he was when he first tumbled into the cavern, and the muscles in his injured leg have begun to atrophy. He’ll need to come up with some sort of strengthening regimen if – no, when – he makes it back. 

As Jayce rests briefly on a particularly narrow ledge to stretch out his overworked muscles and massage through a cramp in his leg, it occurs to him that the creatures that had been watching him have vanished. Doesn’t remember the last time he even saw them, if he’s being honest. 

Still, he presses on. Climbing ever further up, through the fissures, through the undercity, straining every muscle in his body past their limit as he reaches and reaches and reaches.

And then, finally, he pulls himself inch by excruciating inch up into the cloud-dampened sunlight. He scrabbles for purchase on the ruined, rain-slick cobblestone, and heaves himself up over the edge and onto what used to be a walking path. Jayce’s arms buckle, weak from the exertion, and he sprawls out on the ground, panting. 

Everything is exactly as he left it: broken buildings covered in creeping arcane corruption, and the heavy, suffocating gloom of persistent rain. It feels almost cruel, in a way, how little has changed out here when he himself shares so little in common with the man who fell into the fissures.

With no small amount of effort Jayce heaves himself up onto his feet. He checks his brace; tightens the fabric and re-ties the knots. And then he starts walking, once more following the lodestone in his chest directing him ever towards Piltover.

Along the way Jayce finds a large branch that he fashions into a walking stick. The crudely crafted brace is the best he can do at the moment, and it offers necessary support, but needs significantly more fine tuning once he has access to his forge. The walking stick provides much-needed stability and drastically reduces the strain on his leg, allowing him to take fewer breaks. A small mercy.

Deja vu rolls over Jayce in an unsettling wave as he passes through the promenade level; the bombed-out husks of people once again litter the streets and he picks up a new tail of mechanical creatures shadowing his every footstep. This time he ignores them. They’ve proven to be disinterested in anything other than observing and it’s not like Jayce could run from them in his present state even if he wanted to.

What would normally be a relatively easy walk through paved streets has been complicated by sheer and utter destruction, forcing him to take detours around what he can, and scale what he cannot. The degradation gets exponentially worse the closer Jayce gets to what he can only assume is the epicenter of whatever disaster transpired here. 

Crumbling, ruined buildings give way to only the barest hints of foundation; this close there are no longer any standing structures but the mere outlines. Hints at what once was.

The corruption grows so thick it becomes impossible to avoid. It gives a little underneath Jayce’s feet, a spongy texture that reminds him of stepping on moss or a patch of clovers. Jayce isn’t quite sure what he expected it to feel like, but it certainly wasn’t… soft.

He also wasn’t expecting the pull in his chest to be directing him towards the top of the hexgate, although perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

There is nothing else left standing.

Up he climbs. Debris encircle the hexgate in a lazily swirling orbit, like a gently floating mockery of a staircase.

The wind grows in intensity the higher he climbs, threatening to sweep him off his feet and fling him from the platform. Jayce loses his walking stick about halfway up, ripped from his hand by a particularly violent gust that attempts to drag him over the edge with it. He digs his heels into the concrete, bracing against the wind until it quits pulling at his clothing, and continues on. He cannot rest here.

He leaps from platform to platform, sliding precariously across the soft corruption. Climbs further and further up. His chest heaves with exertion and every muscle in his body burns. Demands respite he cannot grant.

Jayce braces himself before taking one final leap – suspended for a heart-stopping moment in midair and buffeted on all sides by the wind – and lands heavily. His leg buckles on impact and he nearly rolls right back off the ledge.

His hands scrabble for purchase on the uneven surface as he begins sliding backwards on the hexgate’s steep, rounded incline, fingernails ripping down to the quick and the skin on his fingertips splitting open against the sharp, protruding cracks.

He’s seconds away from plummeting off of the side when his hand finally catches, nearly ripping his arm from its socket.

Jayce drags himself forward with a pained grunt, climbing the incline until he can at last push himself up onto his feet. He staggers forward, each step a fight against the wind that pummels him relentlessly until suddenly — he’s through, stumbling out of the maelstrom into the eye of the storm. The sunlight stings his eyes after months of overcast skies and dark caverns. Jayce lifts a hand to block out the sun and give himself the chance to adjust to the sudden shift in lighting.

It’s… peaceful. 

The arcane corruption is here too, but here it acts differently. Instead of eating into the hexgate and corroding the concrete and steel, it blankets the surface like grass. Tendrils shoot upward, budding and sweet, looking like small, alien little plants. The offshoots sway in the gentle breeze, occasionally dotted with butterflies.

It’s calm. Serene. Beautiful, almost. But the colors, the plants and butterflies, are all just strange enough to prickle uncomfortably at his senses and send a fissure of unease down his spine.

And there, at the epicenter, kneels a figure. Jayce approaches carefully, lightning shooting up his leg with each step. The final leap had been an overextension of his already-taxed leg. But here, face-to-face at last with the person who has been calling to him since he arrived, pain is irrelevant. He continues, slowly, step by step, craning his neck to see who it could be.

It’s – oh.

Of course.

It’s him.

The Mercury Hammer is cradled in the figure’s — his – hands, head bowed as if in supplication. One final prayer to any gods who might listen. Who did he pray to, he wonders, when he has never had any particular faith in the gods? Or, perhaps he had believed once, but it had withered away after nearly losing his mother to the blizzard. Why trust in the gods when magic was the only thing that had ever saved him?

Exhaustion catches up to him and Jayce’s legs give out. He crashes to the ground before this other version of himself, a hollowed-out shell just like all the others, dusted in the plant-like corruption and crumbling to pieces, and stares in disbelief. 

What a pair they make. Present and future, mirror images of one another.

Something shifts, the barest hint of movement, just beyond this other Jayce and he catches sight of a familiar white robe. A jolt of awareness courses through his body, lighting up all of his nerve endings. It’s the third time he’s seen the mage since he was thrown into these desolate ruins, and this time they seem more… solid. More real. 

Jayce slides a hand into his pocket and thumbs at the smooth surface of the rock, trying to quell the sudden rush of nerves. Takes a fortifying breath, and asks the question that has been plaguing him from the start. Why?

The mage turns and Jayce’s breath stutters in his chest.

He’s older, with a beard that is going grey. But the curve of those cheekbones, the angles and planes of that face are unmistakable. Jayce would know that it anywhere, in any form. He has studied and drawn it enough times over the years to know it as well as his own face.

Viktor.

He’d never imagined how Viktor might look if the universe had been kind enough to give him more time. Had never even dared to hope for that much. He’d been too busy doing everything he could just to see Viktor survive the year – it would’ve been too greedy to even consider asking for more.

And yet here he stands, so beautiful, so alive, that it hurts to look at him. Like staring directly into the sun.

“Jayce,” this older Viktor murmurs, stepping in close to gently to brush the tears from his cheeks. Jayce shudders, closing his eyes and pressing into the curve of Viktor’s hand. “I am… sorry.”

He doesn’t need to explain. Jayce can feel the weight of the world in that apology, of mistakes past and present and future.

But just as there is nothing to explain, there is also nothing to forgive. Jayce knows that the figure is him, kneeling here atop his greatest achievement and even greater failure. Knows that the only way he can be here while Viktor still stands is because Viktor must be the orchestrator of his demise.

How could he possibly be angry when Viktor’s survival is the one thing he has been fighting for these past months? Past years? Viktor is the only reason he’s survived this long in the first place. He was the one who talked him off the ledge after the explosion and, apparently, he was also the one to pluck him and his mother from the blizzard. He owes Viktor everything.

If he has to die, he’d prefer it to be by Viktor’s hand.

As if able to hear his thoughts, Viktor steps away, putting distance between them that stretches out like an eternity. It takes everything in Jayce not to beg him to come back.

There is a pause as they study one another. As long as it has been since he’s seen Viktor, he cannot begin to fathom how long it has been since this Viktor has seen Jayce. How does he look to this other Viktor, he wonders, dirty and broken and disheveled as he is.

And then Viktor makes a curious noise.

“What is that?” he asks, staring down at the hand Jayce still has in his pocket. 

Jayce flushes, fingers spasming around the rock cradled in his palm. Slowly, he pulls it out and opens his hand to show Viktor. He feels like he’s five years old again, presenting the cool stick he had unearthed to his mother and awaiting her approval. 

“It’s uh – it’s a rock I found?” Jayce’s fingers twitch, eager to hide it away from Viktor’s scrutiny. He hesitates before adding, “It made me think of you.”

Viktor’s eyebrow raises as he waits, patiently, for Jayce to continue. The silence is unbearable.

“Yeah, it uh, reminds me of your eyes?” Jayce wishes for death. Wishes that he had fallen off the side of the hexgate. “I just – it was just. Um. It’s pretty.”

“Jayce,” Viktor says his name gently. He can hear the undercurrent of laughter threaded through Viktor’s voice. It’s not too late to fling himself from the edge and finish the job, he thinks almost hysterically. “That is a lovely crystal.”

Jayce looks down at his palm, seeing his rock – a mineral, technically, but crystal is as good a term as any – for the first time in the sunlight. If he had thought it beautiful in the firelight, it is nothing compared to the way the light refracts off of it now.

He was right. It matches Viktor’s eyes perfectly.

“It is,” Jayce agrees and returns it to his pocket, patting it gently. “Calcite, I believe.” A pause. “Honey calcite, specifically.” There is a softness to this other Viktor’s eyes that he wants to keep. He wants to stay here a bit longer, selfishly, just to bask in the attention. In Viktor looking at Jayce like he is a gift.

It has been longer than he cares to remember since his Viktor last looked at him with any kind of awe. He’d almost forgotten how it warms him from the inside. Makes him feel like he could do anything, be anything, as long as Viktor is by his side.

As long as he keeps looking at Jayce like that.

His own fault.

He hasn’t been there. Has been too busy caught up in politics, in the Council, In the required socializing and under-handed dealing required to secure donor support. He has failed Viktor in every way conceivable.

It’s painfully apparent why his Viktor doesn’t look at him like this any more.

The moment passes and the other Viktor sighs, placing his hand on the fallen Jayce’s shoulder. And he explains everything.

Timelines, Jayce thinks faintly. Not the future then. Or, a future, but not his.

Not yet, anyway.

It helps, knowing that Viktor needs Jayce just as much as Jayce needs Viktor. Eases that small part of him that has always felt like a fraud; like a boy playing at being the kind of scientist – the kind of partner – that Viktor needs. That he deserves.

“There is something I need you to do,” Viktor pauses, “it is something only you can do.”

“Yes, of course,” Jayce responds quickly, eager to prove himself at last. 

“You must kill me,” says Viktor. As if he hasn’t just asked Jayce to rip out his own heart.

A pause. And then,

“V, you know I can’t do that.” He pleads, voice breaking. 

“You must,” Viktor continues, ruthless. “That is not the Viktor you know, Jayce, not really. And you cannot allow his influence to spread. He thinks he is doing the right thing – it is not a kindness to let him continue.”

Viktor explains the healing that his counterpart is currently performing, the help he is trying to provide, and its consequences. How this attempt at good will be twisted into something terrible. Puppets, Viktor calls them, for they are little more than marionettes on a string, dancing to Viktor’s tune. And the souls he will harvest as he creates them.

It is unfathomable.

And of course, Viktor is right. He must be stopped.

Jayce bows his head and just for a moment, he grieves. All of this is his fault, his mess to clean up. He should never have used the hexcore, should never have brokered the deal for Zaun’s independence, should never have joined the council. He has to do this. To save the world. To save Viktor.

It will destroy him, but what is one soul when compared to millions? They don’t deserve to pay for his mistakes. For his inability to follow the natural order and let Viktor go.

Jayce exhales slowly through his nose. Tries to choke down the rising nausea at even the thought of — 

He can’t.

He must.

Jayce raises his head and looks up at Viktor. He tries to imprint this older Viktor upon his memory. Tries to memorize the new lines of his face, to map out the faint hint of wrinkles, because he knows this is the last time – the only time – he will ever see this.

It’s devastating to know what they could’ve had. What could’ve been.

Jayce steels himself. “Send me back.”

Viktor nods, and Jayce can see the relief wash over his face. Has he been here before? Another version of himself, from some other doomed timeline?

Have other versions of himself refused to kill his Viktor, and thus decided the fate of humanity? If he is the only one who can reach Viktor, the only one who can stop Viktor…

In all timelines, in all possibilities, Viktor had said. Only you.

“I won’t fail you,” Jayce promises, as he is offered his counterpart’s corrupt hammer. Not again. “I swear it.” He takes the hammer in hand, comforted by the familiar weight after so long without it.

Viktor reaches out and pulls the arcane from the fabric of the universe into his waiting palm. The air grows heavy with energy, almost crackling along Jayce’s skin, and there is the barest scent of ozone. The swirl of magic is mesmerising; it dances, shimmering brightly with color, before weaving together under Viktor’s control. It has been so long since Jayce was saved from that blizzard – since he last saw Viktor do magic – and he’s just as entranced now as he was then.

There’s little wonder he became so obsessed with the arcane. Viktor is magnificent.

Jayce glances up to find Viktor staring at him with undisguised longing, and it takes his breath away. Fields of dreamless solitude. How long has this Viktor been alone with no one but himself for company? Jayce had barely withstood several months on his own down in the fissures.

The advanced degradation of the other Jayce hints at it, Viktor’s tale of loss. Of broken dreams and despair. And to be here, by himself, alone with nothing but the skeletal remains of humanity for company? Reminded at every turn that despite your best efforts to help, you had instead brought about the world’s destruction? 

Viktor has only ever wanted to better the lives of his people. 

Jayce does not stop to think about how this is not his Viktor or how he might react. He reaches out and claps his hand on the curve of Viktor’s shoulder, squeezing gently. It’s as natural as breathing, offering Viktor comfort. A gesture he has done thousands of times. 

“I swear it,” Jayce repeats softly. 

Viktor’s shoulder tenses briefly beneath his touch, and then relaxes. He reaches up to clasp Jayce’s hand, thumb skimming gently over the rough skin. An almost-forgotten habit. This may not be his timeline, and they may not be each other’s partner, but he is still Jayce and this is still Viktor.

And then the magic Viktor has been collecting expands, and Jayce is gone.

The increasingly familiar sensation of being ripped apart, broken down entirely into particles and remade sears through Jayce. It is excruciating, filling him with everything and nothing all at once until he is re-formed, made whole in a blindingly white expanse.

Pain splits his head in two, licking white-hot fire through his skull. It is matched in intensity by the jarring impact of his bad knee hitting the ground and the runestone he has worn for most of his life fusing directly into the skin of his wrist. His hands spasm around the shaft of the hammer as Jayce swallows a scream.

He tightens his grip and uses the leverage to pull himself upright, vertigo hitting as soon as he stands, swiftly followed by a second wave of nausea. Jayce pants, breaths coming out in small white clouds in the frigid air, and reaches up to dig his fingers into his temple in an attempt at relief. He feverishly hopes that he will never be pulled across timelines again.

Movement catches the corner of his eye and Jayce turns his head, body tensing. A figure robed in white stands placidly off to the side, anomaly looming just behind them, and - is that Salo?

The explosion had crushed Salo’s lower body – he had seen it with his own eyes on the day of the attack. Salo hasn’t been able to walk for months and, last Jayce had heard, he had been wallowing in his rooms ever since. There had even been whispers about a growing addiction to shimmer. So how was he standing…?

Ah. Viktor.

Jayce studies him. There is something different about Salo’s eyes, but in his quest to never spend more time with the man than absolutely necessary he can’t quite figure out what. There is, however, a lightness to the man’s face, an openness of expression that Jayce has never seen before.

(Truthfully, he has always thought Salo looked like a pinch-faced little weasel, perpetually dissatisfied with the world. This new gentleness in demeanor is unsettling, at best.)

And of course: Salo’s legs. Seemingly healed. Or, perhaps not healed, but reconstructed from an unfamiliar material and covered in a curious pattern that prickles at the back of Jayce’s mind. He gets the distinct feeling that he has seen it somewhere before, and it takes Jayce a minute to place it.

Viktor, in that brief moment Jayce had seen him, freshly escaped from the hexcore’s cocoon before he had been wrapped in a blanket and walked away, out of Jayce’s life. Viktor had been purple rather than this curious iridescent color, but the swirl of metallic skin is still beautifully, hauntingly familiar.

(He thinks of the books and notes back in the lab about metals and the arcane; about how the Jayce of several months ago had been so painfully eager to share his theories with Viktor. So painfully optimistic. He had not known what would come. How could he?)

He lifts his gaze from Salo’s legs, back to the man watching him with a detached sort of curiosity and for a split second Salo is overridden – replaced with one of the puppets from the other timeline. A high-pitched ringing fills his ears, loud and insistent. Drowning out everything else.

Jayce flinches away from the sound. Presses a palm against his forehead.

And then Salo is human again. He tilts his head, the light catching on the opalescent marks on his face (fingerprints, Jayce now knows), and offers him something that should be impossible. Something Jayce desperately wants to be impossible because that would mean that maybe the other Viktor had gotten it wrong. Maybe this Viktor, his Viktor, could still be saved.

But Salo’s eyes swirl with color, with magic, and he speaks with a voice that is not his own. 

The sound of Jayce’s own name, soft and drawn-out in affection, hits like a punch to the stomach.

And it’s Viktor talking to him, familiar lilting accent at odds with Salo’s face. Viktor telling him that he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to talk to Jayce again. That he’d prefer to converse in person but he’s too busy. With other people. Other projects.

On the other side of it, Jayce finds he does not care to be an afterthought. Doesn’t know how Viktor dealt with it, with him, acting like this for so long. He’ll do better, be better, from now on, if given half the chance.

Salo-turned-Viktor approaches, reaching out as if to clasp Jayce’s hands in his own. (In greeting? In welcome? Is this something that his touch-shy Viktor does now, reaching out with ease to hold the hands of others, when it took years for him to stop flinching away from Jayce?) He ignores the outstretched hands. Watches them fall.

It shouldn’t bother him as much as it does. He was told this is not his Viktor, not really, and he’s not even wearing his own face at the moment.

It chafes nonetheless.

(I thought you were done with Hextech, Jayce can’t help saying; pleading, almost. And me. Because why wouldn’t he lay his heart bare here, where Viktor isn’t, in front of an audience? Viktor considers him through Salo’s eyes. I was clouded by emotions, Viktor says. As if any of this were that simple. Come visit me.)

Reality fractures with another skull-splitting stab of pain. Jayce’s vision blurs. Despite the frigid temperature of the room, kept low so that the energy cores for the hexgate won’t overheat, Jayce feels like he’s burning from the inside out. He sees a whisper of moment, faint and fuzzy around the edges, but when Jayce blinks away the blurriness nothing has moved.

Salo is standing in place, chattering away about how he owes Viktor everything, effusive and kind with his praises in a way he has never been.

Jayce’s breath escapes him in a hiss, given physical form as a small puff of white condensation. Everything is still, aside from Salo’s gestures as he talks.

Curious.

Then Salo-as-Viktor, or perhaps Viktor-as-Salo, looks over at Jayce and claims that he’s given hextech to the people, just as they had always promised each other that they would. The pronouncement is delivered with relish; finally their ultimate goal has been accomplished and all it took was for Viktor to leave Jayce behind and strike out on his own. Perhaps Jayce had been holding him back all along.

There is something indescribably cruel in seeing someone claim with absolute conviction that they have achieved their dreams, that they have done the impossible, without you. Maybe even only found it possible to achieve because you were gone.

There is something even more cruel in knowing that they have not actually achieved those dreams, despite all evidence to the contrary.

But there is nothing he can do or say at this point to bring Viktor back. He has already tried once and failed miserably. The only thing he has left, the only thing he can do, is follow through with his promise to the other Viktor.

He’s already seen the results of ignoring advice given by those older and wiser than himself. He won’t make that mistake again.

(I can’t let you leave, Jayce says to Salo’s retreating back. I’m sorry you feel that way, Salo says in reply, making no effort to stop or even face Jayce. It is a final confirmation of his suspicions. One he didn’t need, not really, but appreciates nonetheless. It makes this easier.)

Jayce brings the hammer down, fast and hard.

The entire time they’ve been here, Salo hasn’t taken a single breath.

Jayce doesn’t let himself stop, knowing that if he gives himself even a moment’s rest that he will falter. Instead, he heads down; down through the hexgate, down through Piltover, down into Zaun. 

The cities bustle with life. It’s disconcerting at first, weaving through the large swell of people in Piltover taking a leisurely stroll in the unseasonably pleasant weather (although they give him a wide berth – Jayce knows he looks terrible and probably smells even worse). He elbows through the crush in the promenade boundary markets as the inhabitants from both cities finish their weekly shopping, and appreciates the comparative quiet as he makes his way through the entresol level. It’s equally busy here, all of the shops doing a brisk business, but there are fewer merchants hawking their wares loudly at passersby. 

Jayce has never been able to blend in down here – he still doesn’t, not really – but this is the first time he doesn’t pick up a tail, despite his noticeable leg injury. Perhaps he’s finally dirty in a way the undercity respects. Or perhaps the giant hammer he’s carrying gives any would-be pickpockets and muggers pause. 

He wishes he could tell Viktor.

Jayce descends into the sump level and heads for the caverns.

The caverns are a labyrinth of twists and turns and dead ends. It’s only after doubling back twice that Jacye notices the markers that have been recently etched into the stone, directing travellers where to go. 

The dark, cool tunnel walls are uncomfortably familiar and the deeper he goes, the more narrow they become. A heavy weight sits in the center of his chest that he tries to breathe around, as it crushes him by inches, growing heavier and heavier with each step. Dread creeps through his veins like poison as Jayce’s feet stutter to a halt. 

The walls press in on him from all sides, growing closer and closer, amplifying his increasingly rapid breathing. He reaches blindly into his pocket, fumbling to find the opening, and pulls out the calcite, rubbing his thumb along the familiar smooth ridges. Crouches low to the ground and curls in on himself as his insides shred themselves to pieces on the razor-sharp claws of panic. Closes his eyes and focuses on the calcite between his fingers, timing his breaths with each swipe of his thumb, until the feeling slowly begins to ebb away.

He didn’t think he’d be back down here so soon. Wishes he wasn’t here at all, really, but he has no choice. Not if he intends to follow through on his promise to the other Viktor (and he does intend to follow through this time. Whatever else he may be, whatever else he may do, this time he will keep his promise or, at the very least, die trying). 

It takes several minutes for his breathing to return to normal. His legs feel like jelly as he stands, bad knee popping loudly. Jayce returns the calcite to his pocket and gives it one last pat through the fabric. He takes a fortifying breath, squares his shoulders, and sets off once more down the narrow passageways.

The settlement is relatively small, nestled into the side of the fissures on the outskirts of the mines, and bustling with activity. A group of people puts clean washing up on lines to dry, exchanging stories with a nearby group as they harvest produce from a vegetable garden. Others mill about on the side of the encampment, chatting quietly as they watch several children chase each other. It’s peaceful down here, with the low murmur of voices and the bright peals of children’s laughter. The scent of grilled vegetables floats by and Jayce’s mouth waters instantly, ravenous at the thought of consuming real food. 

Everyone looks so happy. So healthy. 

It’s everything Viktor has always wanted to accomplish: helping the poor, the weak, the disenfranchised. There is a light-heartedness in the way that the people interact with one another that is absent in every other part of the undercity. No one here is sick or starving, fighting just to see tomorrow.

He hovers just outside the settlement, observing the people as they go about their lives and ducking behind empty tents to avoid being spotted. It’s unclear how the whole hivemind thing works (does Viktor have to be actively looking through people’s eyes or can he just… see everything? will people’s confusion at his sudden appearance alert Viktor?) but he doesn’t want to give his presence away to Viktor. Not yet. Not until he’s ready.

(Will he ever be ready?)

From his vantage point, he can see there is no gate at the entrance, no guards or people posted. He doesn’t see a single weapon – nothing that can be used to attack or defend. It makes sense, Viktor has always been opposed to violence, but that means there is nothing stopping Jayce from walking right into the settlement to hunt down Viktor except his own unwillingness to do so. He has to be careful, he tells himself again. Sneak in. Can’t alert Viktor. 

Jayce is a coward, standing still under the guise of reconnaissance against an unarmed group of people just to delay the inevitable.

The settlement gives every appearance of being a genuine utopia and Jayce wishes desperately that any part of it was real. But it’s not, and Jayce has a promise to keep.

He steels himself. No more procrastinating. He darts forward, quietly weaving through the tents and skirting around the clusters of people. He’s halfway through the settlement when someone glances over absentmindedly mid-conversation. Their eyes meet and the plan instantly falls apart.

Jayce freezes, eyes wide. He knows how he looks: disheveled and wild and clearly sneaking through the settlement with a weapon. It is obvious that he’s an intruder, and yet they don’t startle. There is no shouting or raising the alarm. Just a placid look of curiosity, like one might give a cat as it strolls by.

But Jayce’s vision stutters as their eyes meet, rips through realities and planes, distorting until he’s once again faced with a smooth, sightless porcelain face. White hot pain lances through his head and lodges deep in the base of his skull; Jayce digs his palm into his eye with a hiss.

Everyone in the settlement turns in unison to look at him – no longer human, but white and gold and iridescent – tracking his movements with an uncanny tilt of their heads and a level of malice he has never felt before. Danger, something in the back of his mind screams, run and do not stop, and Jayce knows with every fibre of his being that these are not the docile, run-down puppets from the other timeline.

They’re going to kill him. They’re going to pull his mind from his body, rip out his very soul, and turn his remains into one of them.

He will not run this time. He will fight with everything he has or die trying. Jayce tightens his grip on the warped Mercury Hammer and swings it up into position, unlocking the safety, engaging the cannon — 

He blinks. The puppet is gone, and in its place stands a child.

A child.

With a startled gasp Jayce disengages the cannon, and drops the hammer to the ground with a heavy thud. He looks around, heart slamming frantically against his chest, but he sees no porcelain puppets. Just the human-looking ones.

The child looks up at him, curious and unafraid, and Jayce suddenly back in the chem factories, staring down at the small, broken body at his feet. Wet coughs and gasps ringing in his ears as the child, Renni’s son (oh gods he doesn’t even know the kid’s name), chokes on his own blood, staring up at Jayce, first in confusion, then in death.

Jayce shudders, revulsion thick in his veins as he staggers backwards, pushing away the memories. He can’t – he knows the child in front of him isn’t really here, hasn’t even been alive from the moment Viktor laid his hands on him, but he can’t – not again.

A small gentle hand presses into his. 

Jayce stares blankly down at the kid, frozen in place. Uncomprehending. Large, soft eyes staring up at him without an ounce of mistrust or fear, even after what he almost just did. There is a small tug on his hand and Jayce follows helplessly, lead slowly towards the largest dwelling. It is easily twice as big as every other building in the settlement and it shimmers in the fading light, beautiful and iridescent.

They stop at the base of the steps leading up into Viktor’s residence. Jayce’s hand is released, just as gently as it was grabbed, and the loss of contact is startling. It had been grounding, comforting, to hold onto something that wasn’t the last shreds of his sanity or a war hammer.

Now he doesn’t even have that.

The child gestures towards the dwelling, silently urging Jayce to enter. He swallows thickly, heart in his throat, and ascends the stairs.

It is a single, open room, rounded and massive and empty aside from Viktor, somehow floating up in the air just out of reach with his eyes closed and legs crossed.

Oh, Jayce thinks faintly as his brain stutters to an almost complete halt, his hair has grown. It looks beautiful, gently framing Viktor’s face, softening the sharp angles and making him appear younger. Jayce’s fingers itch with the desire to rub the strands between his fingertips and discover if it’s as silky as it looks.

Viktor also looks stronger, healthier – no longer comprised solely of razor-sharp edges and jutting bones. He’s still lean, he’s always been lean due to a mix of genetics and malnutrition, but it’s much closer to the Viktor he first met than the Viktor he had become. The extent to which the hexcore has changed Viktor’s physiology is unclear at a glance (does he still eat? is the metal fully integrated? is it heavy? how does it feel to the touch? warm? cold? was Jayce right about it being an entirely new form of sorcery-based metal?), but he no longer looks like a living skeleton, ravaged by illness.

Jayce drinks in the sight of Viktor greedily, starved after months of separation, cataloging every miniscule change. His hair. His leg. It hasn’t been that long since they parted, and yet those months had been entire lifetimes. 

Viktor left and Jayce foolishly let him, thinking he owed Viktor space. Declared his place was by Viktor’s side and then watched him walk away without even the slightest hint of resistance. He should have followed. Should have told Viktor how much he meant. Should have been right here, in the sump, by Viktor’s side. Helping him. Supporting him.

Instead, he is here to betray Viktor once more.

“I’m sorry,” Jayce whispers, swinging the corrupted hammer up into position. It doesn’t matter if it’s the right thing to do, he will never forgive himself for this. Will hopefully only survive long enough in the coming fight to keep his promise to the other Viktor, because he cannot even fathom trying to continue existing afterwards. As if everything is okay. As if he didn’t have to destroy the one person who gives his life meaning.

No. Jayce will not survive the coming confrontation. One way or another, it will be the end for both of them.

Viktor stirs, eyes blinking slowly open. It’s heart-breakingly familiar. Jayce has seen this play out hundreds, if not thousands, of times in their lab after spending all night feverishly chasing the latest discovery, finishing the newest prototype. Accidentally drifting off, head buried in arms, and then waking slowly, softly. He has always treasured the moment just after Viktor stirs, still loose-limbed and soft with sleep. The slow, wry smile before the aches and pains of life and sleeping at a workbench make themselves known.

Viktor’s eyes are a kaleidoscope of colors, iridescent and beautiful as he blinks, before they shift in Jayce’s direction. Viktor looks down at Jayce, eyebrows scrunching in confusion for a heartbeat. Then recognition washes over Viktor’s expression and, devastatingly, the corners of his lips curl upwards in soft delight. Happy to see Jayce.

Their eyes meet and Viktor smiles and gods help him – Jayce wavers.

He can feel it: the smallest shift within him, a fracture in the universe. Feels deep within his soul the absolute certainty that other versions of himself drop their weapons right here, right at this very moment. They decide that having Viktor, even like this, tainted by the hexcore and no longer fully himself, is better than losing him.

Is better than being the one to kill him.

He can’t blame these other versions of himself for laying down their arms when he wants so desperately to join them. To ignore responsibility. To pull Viktor into his arms, breathe him in and just stay here in their own small corner of the world, playing at liberation. At freedom. Leave the fate of the universe up to someone infinitely more qualified than he is.

He’s so tired. Tired of fighting. Tired of missing Viktor. Tired of making the wrong choice at every turn. If he stays here, he won’t have to worry about any of that; all choice and free will will be taken from him and he’ll be able to live out his final days simply, happily, by Viktor’s side.

In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good, Viktor had said. And this – the people, the souls, the puppets – isn’t good. It’s just another form of great masquerading as good, pretending to help when all it does is hurt. Viktor, his Viktor, would hate it. Would want to be stopped.

The cannon fires.

It’s loud; a blast of concentrated hex-crystal power that shoots first like a small laser, and then rapidly expands, shooting straight through the roof of the building. The arcane corruption has spread to the hex-crystal, giving the blast of energy gravity-defying properties. Broken pieces of the roof float gently in the air above the new hole, reminiscent of the debris swirling lazily around the hexgate.

Viktor’s body remains suspended in midair for a second before gravity reasserts itself. He drops abruptly, like a marionette with its strings cut, crumpling to the ground with a sickening crunch.

Jayce darts forward, dropping the hammer and bridging the distance between them. He falls to his knees and sweeps Viktor into his arms, cradling his body close. Viktor blinks up at him, eyes wide in confusion. Unable to comprehend what just happened. What Jayce has done to him. Jayce feels cleaved in two, jagged and raw. “V,” he chokes, eyes brimming with unshed tears. He brushes hair out of Viktor’s face with shaking hands. “I had to – I promised – I’m sorry,” he whispers, “I’m so sorry.”

Viktor’s breath stutters as he looks up at Jayce. Then he exhales one final time, a quiet “Jayce.” The light fades from his eyes and Viktor is gone.

Jayce keens, shattering into a million tiny pieces. He cups the back of Viktor’s head and presses their foreheads together, gently, tenderly. Gathers him as close as possible, grip tight, as if trying to fuse their bodies together. As if trying to mend the gaping hole in his heart, in his very soul.

Viktor’s body dashed against the rubble. Blood, vibrant and red and stark against ashen skin. A cane, lovingly crafted and refined over a decade of partnership, snapped into pieces. Cold. So very cold.

“I’m sorry,” Jayce whispers over and over again, a litany against the fragile skin of Viktor’s temple.

A horrific death knell rings throughout the settlement, a haunting moan that builds and builds, and Jayce is out of time. 

It is unthinkable, unforgivable, to leave Viktor’s body here without a proper burial or send off. But there is a fight coming, breaking out across the settlement as he hears the Noxians make their move, and he’s in no fit state to join this particular battle.

He reluctantly lowers Viktor’s body to the ground and wraps him in that blue blanket once more – the same one from the lab, pulled hastily from their couch, and oh, Viktor had kept it – making sure to cover his body completely in this makeshift burial shroud. He wouldn’t want to be on display.

Jayce gently tucks Viktor’s hair behind his ear, knuckles brushing against cheek, and makes one final adjustment to the blanket before grabbing the hammer and exiting the building. He doesn’t allow himself to look back, not even for a moment. If he sees Viktor’s body laying there, small and fragile and alone, he won’t be able to leave.

So Jayce moves forward with purpose, slipping unseen through the buildings and around the fighting. He accidentally stumbles upon Caitlyn (Sprout? he asks in disbelief, before shaking his head and swallowing all of his questions. There is no time to catch up, We gotta get out of here. Follow me.) and helps her drag Vi and Jinx out, away from the bloodshed, back up towards Piltover.

After dropping everyone off at the Kiramman estate with promises to meet up again soon, Jayce finds himself standing on his mother’s doorstep, knocking hesitantly. His keys remain in the lab, carelessly dropped on his worktable a lifetime ago. 

Ximena opens the door and gasps at the sight of him, eyes round as dinner plates (¿Mijo, estás bien? she asks in a horrified whisper; she doesn’t wait for a response, and Jayce is grateful. He doesn’t know how he could possibly answer that question). She immediately ushers him inside and bundles him off toward the shower with a stack of clean laundry and fresh towels.

He carefully removes his brace and peels off the tattered remains of his clothing, discarding them in a heap to throw out later. He limps into the shower, turns the water blisteringly hot, and scrubs and scrubs and scrubs until his skin is raw. Panic claws at his chest and up his throat, choking him – blood on his hands, so much blood, why won’t it come off, why can’t he get clean – until he’s gasping for breath.

Here, crowded by walls that are too close and stained with blood he can’t wash off, he falls to pieces. A scream forms, trapped within his ribcage. It beats against the bones of its enclosure. Demanding release he doesn’t grant, he can’t grant. The pressure in his chest, in his heart, builds and it builds and it builds.

Ximena finds him curled up into a ball on the floor an hour later, dead-eyed and listless under the spray of water. It is ice-cold to the touch, the hot water long having run out. She climbs over Jayce, careful not to slip, careful not to step on him, and joins him down on the tile. Settles against the shower wall and wraps her arms around him, cradling him close.

He buries his face into her shoulder and the dam within him bursts, pressure finally released. He sobs in great, ugly heaves that wrack his entire body. Ximena holds him through each wail, each rolling shudder. Pats his back gently. Makes hushed soothing noises.

When the tears finally run dry Ximena pulls Jayce up and out of the shower. Turns off the water. She has him stand still as she wipes the snot from his face and towels him dry, settling into a running dialogue of everything the neighbors have been up to recently. He doesn’t pay attention as exhaustion settles heavily atop his weary bones, but his mother’s words act as a gentle hum of background noise; it’s just enough to keep him from thinking. From remembering. 

She helps him dress as he stands there, silent and docile, capable only of following the most basic of commands. Then sends him off to the dinner table, piled high with food that had been cooked as she waited for him, as she goes to change out of her own now-soaked clothing.

If asked, Jayce would have said he wasn’t hungry; it isn’t until he is seated, surrounded by the dishes of his childhood, that Jayce discovers he is ravenous. He eats the tortas greedily, savoring the juicy meat and crispy bread and licking the sauce from his fingers as it spills. Inhales the rice and beans at an alarming rate, scooping seconds and then thirds onto his plate.

Freshly clothed, Ximena joins him. She says nothing about the changes she has surely noticed: his leg. His hair. His beard. The breakdown. Says nothing about how long it has been since she has last heard from him. She simply refills his water, chews slowly on her own torta, and continues regaling him with the petty dramas of their neighbors.

When Jayce visibly starts to droop, belly full and the events of the past several months catching up to him, she whisks away the empty dishes and leads him to bed, tucking him in with a kiss brushed against his forehead.

Jayce is fast asleep before the bedroom door closes.

Jayce sleeps for almost an entire day.

His mother makes quesadillas as soon as he stumbles out of his room, tutting quietly about how thin he looks. The quesadillas are warm and delicious and taste like home. Jayce blinks away the sting of tears with a laugh about how hot the food is, fresh from the griddle.

Ximena, who has seen Jayce slurp boiling soup, straight from the fire, with reckless abandon and no more than a small wince, smiles and nods in agreement. 

If she notices the tremor in his hands or the wobble in his voice, she does not mention it. 

Ximena has new clothes made for Jayce and leaves them in a stack at the foot of his childhood bed. What little clothing he has stashed here is a confusing mix of too small (from his childhood) and too large (from before he fell into the fissures and starved for months). It’s both a surprise and a relief to once again have something that will fit properly.

Jayce cleans up his beard, trims his hair just enough to even it out, and puts on his new clothing. It’s nice, he thinks, to finally feel human again. To feel clean again. 

Until he catches sight of himself in a mirror and realizes he’s wearing the colors of the undercity - of Zaun. He swallows thickly.

His mother had always understood, even when words failed him.

When he goes to bed, Jayce places the honey calcite next to his childhood crystal collection. It’s both smaller and smoother than the others, worn down and polished by Jayce’s constant handling, but glitters just as beautifully in the light.

When he wakes, he slips it back into his pocket. Runs his fingers along the smooth surface whenever his hands start shaking, taking deep breaths and counting slowly backwards from a hundred until the panic recedes.

The survival-induced exhaustion abates with food and rest, and the insomnia returns.

This time, Jayce doesn’t fight himself. After two sleepless nights he tells his mother that he’s going out and not to wait up for him. Ximena brushes a kiss to his forehead and presses his coat into his hand; tells him to be careful walking these streets so late at night, and that she loves him.

It would be easier for both of them if his mother thought he was slipping out this late at night to join a lover, but she has always been perceptive and Jayce has always been a terrible liar. She asks no questions and he offers no answers.

When he lets himself into the cramped apartment he is hit a familiar pang of guilt – the blast of the cannon, the wet hacking cough, running from the ruins with Viktor’s limp body in his arms, running towards Viktor’s fallen body, blood wiped hastily away with the back of a hand by Viktor, blood wiped tenderly away with gentle sweeps of a thumb by Jayce – but there is also an overwhelming sense of relief. Of homecoming.

Jayce curls up once more in the nest of blankets and pillows. Buries himself for a second time in the lingering smell of Viktor. Being back in his childhood home surrounded by mementos of a happy adolescence has been comforting in its own way, but Viktor’s apartment makes him feel at peace. Content. Safe, as illogical as that is.

He hadn’t known why he was so compelled to come here last time. He knows now. 

Only you, Jayce thinks fuzzily. 

He drifts off within minutes.

Jayce stops by the Talis household to have breakfast with his mother, change into fresh clothes, and retrieve his hammer. He’s had enough time to recover. It’s time he talks to whatever remaining leadership there is about Viktor, Noxus, and the oncoming war that sits right at Piltover’s doorstep.

Hopefully they will listen.

When he arrives, everyone is out for lunch and Jayce finds himself alone in the council room, fingers trailing along the gold lines of the repaired council desk. The attack feels like a lifetime ago, even if it still haunts his dreams. He had hoped coming to see it would ease something inside him, make the memories a little easier to bear but —

It won’t matter for very much longer anyway.

Jayce is startled out of his contemplation as footsteps echo softly throughout the room. Someone approaches, the acoustics making them sound both further and closer than they are. He turns toward the entrance, tightening his grip on the hammer.

A figure cloaked in white approaches, stepping slowly out of the shadows blanketing the doorway – Salo? Jayce thinks almost-hysterically – until the hood is pushed back to reveal Mel, staring at him with eyes wide in astonishment. He relaxes his grip in relief.

Her hair is the first thing he notices, no longer pulled back in an intricate updo. It’s a stronger hairstyle, matching the new golden lines brushed onto her face and practical clothing. Different from the poised Mel he’s used to, but Jayce finds that it suits her. She has previously wielded her beauty as a weapon, using it to disarm people and distract from her intelligence. There is a new edge of steel to her that tells him she has become the weapon.

(What happened to you? she asks, looking at the leg brace with no small amount of concern. Doesn’t matter, he says. There are not sufficient enough words in all of Runeterra to explain what has transpired these past months. The things he has seen. The things he has done. Some things are better left unsaid; he doesn’t want to burden her.)

Jayce avoids her gaze, uncomfortable with the hesitation he finds there. Looks down at the table, tracing his fingers once more along the gold. In the background Mel explains that something has happened to her too. The way her voice cracks is concerning, he can tell that she has also suffered since last they met. He keeps staring down at the table. Gripped once more by the memories of that horrible day where an explosion kills half the council (the screaming and wailing, the thick smoke, and Viktor; broken, dashed against the rubble) — 

And he and Mel made it through without a single scratch.

He looks sharply over towards Mel, her hands clasped before her in a rare display of anxiety. It clicks into place.

(You’re the reason we didn’t die in the attack, Jayce says. Of course. It's always been strange that he could make it through such destruction entirely unharmed. A miracle, he’d been told. He had no use for miracles – not when it meant Viktor bleeding out in his arms. Why just me? he demands. Why not save all of them? The unspoken accusation hangs heavy between them. Jayce knows he’s being unfair and, above all else, incredibly selfish, but he can’t help it. If Mel had the ability to save people, why didn’t she save Viktor?)

They argue and Jayce is cold. Ruthless. Accuses Mel of lying. Of using them to get to hextech. He hurls words at her angrily, sharpened like knives. Aiming to inflict as much damage as he can because it’s not right that Viktor died in this room and left him all alone.

Jayce survived an explosion that he shouldn’t have. Stole Viktor back from the jaws of death when he shouldn’t have. Set into motion a chain of events that has ended with the destruction of Runeterra in at least one other timeline. Probably more than one, if he knows himself. All because he couldn’t let Viktor go. All because he once again survived at a crossroads where he should have died.

He never should have made it out of that blizzard. Never should have been stopped from jumping. Never should have survived the bombing of the council.

He takes it out on Mel, throwing around accusations with targeted precision, because the only other option is to acknowledge the fact that the world is quite literally better off without him. Safer without him.

The shadows shift imperceptibly, catching his eye and dragging his attention away from Mel as she argues right back, refusing to play the scapegoat for Jayce’s mistakes. He squints, searching, until his eyes snag on something he can’t quite make out and the shadows fracture, shattering like glass.

Mel’s voice fades away as agony sears through Jayce’s skull and rips through his veins. The runestone embedded in his wrist flashes and the skin surrounding it catches fire, searing white hot. He sees puppets, frozen in place. Sees them turn to look at him. Start to move, limbs rusty from disuse. Reach for him, grasping, pulling, fingers like claws, like daggers —

He brings the Mercury Hammer up, firing at the column just behind Mel. It cuts a hole straight through the marble. For one horrible moment silence blankets the room and Jayce wonders if he was wrong, if he’d read the signs incorrectly. Maybe he’s losing his mind again, firing at things that aren’t there. Maybe Mel isn’t really here. Again.

It lands gracefully, metal and porcelain clinking softly against the polished floor. It’s almost beautiful in its construction, all smooth, unblemished white and golden detailing. Free from arcane corruption and the degradation of time.

A newly created puppet.

Which means Viktor has begun the final stage of his – what had the other Viktor called it? Evolution? They’re out of time, he thinks faintly. He needs to talk to everyone with even the slightest claim to authority. Needs to convince them that war is here, no longer a distant possibility but a certainty, and that evacuations must begin immediately. Needs to prepare those who will remain for what is to come.

Viktor addresses him, voice heavily distorted but still recognizable, through the puppet. Mel gasps quietly behind him. He moves forward, inserting himself in between them and blocking her from sight of Viktor’s puppet.

(Had you given me a chance, I would have shown you the merits of my work. Viktor pauses. Our work. Jayce’s stomach churns, nauseous.)

And gods, no, that’s not right. Or, it is, technically. Everything that has happened, everything that Viktor has accomplished thus far, is the culmination of their combined efforts. But this? The subjugation of people under the guise of healing? Of helping? This he cannot lay claim to, doesn’t want any part of. And neither would Viktor, if he was in his right mind. Not led astray by some parasitic piece of magic they had invited into the world.

So yes, it is theirs. Together they laid the groundwork for this iteration of hextech. But as it is, as it currently stands, it belongs solely to Viktor and whatever arcane influence is driving him.

(No, this is your obsession, he tells Viktor. Everything you’ve done to these people, you did alone.)

Jayce swings, putting everything he has behind the blow. Hoping to end this confrontation as quickly as possible. The puppet bends backwards, avoiding Jayce’s attack with ease, and Jayce realizes with horror that he has miscalculated. Thus far he has only seen these puppets in the other timeline, where they had lain dormant for ages, rusted and corroded by the elements and degraded under the arcane corruption.

He has never seen Viktor’s puppets in their prime. Has foolishly analyzed his opponents based on inaccurate data. Has, as a result, severely underestimated the extent of their abilities.

No wonder there had been no survivors in the other timeline. Standing up to them must have been impossible for civilians.

He fires off a blast, less hopeful of a quick conclusion now, but eager to keep Viktor on the defensive. The puppet sidesteps the attack neatly, and the two blasts that follow, leaping up towards the ceiling and out of sight.

(I am alone no longer, Viktor tells him, and Jayce wants to scream. Viktor has never been alone, not since the day he talked Jayce down from the ledge and gave his life meaning. And it’s all Jayce’s fault that Viktor ever thought for one second that he was. I now speak with all their voices.)

Jayce tries to keep Viktor talking. Encourages him to give whatever message he had come to deliver as he scans the ceiling for a glimpse of the puppet. For something so brightly colored, it blends surprisingly well into the shadows. He can’t even listen for Viktor; the same acoustics that earlier warned him of Mel’s approach sends Viktor’s distorted voice ricocheting wildly around the room.

(Somehow I think you already understand what must transpire to complete my mission, Vikor muses. He isn’t surprised that Viktor has divined as much – would be more surprised if he hadn’t, given everything he’s done – but it is a regrettable loss of any small advantage he might have had.)

Viktor complains about the Noxian disrupting the peaceful assimilation he had planned; seems to regard her involvement as unfortunate but necessary for the achievement of his goals (Mother? Mel asks, both surprised and resigned). He doesn’t mention that Jayce is the reason he needs Ambessa’s assistance, but the implication is clear.

The puppet swoops down from its hiding spot at a speed almost unrecognizable to the naked eye, appearing next to Mel. Honing in on the daughter of his warmongering ally. It towers over her, invading her space, and crowding her up against the council desk. Observing. Threatening.

Mel raises her hands and a golden sphere of arcane energy surrounds her, acting as a barrier. It shimmers, beautiful as its wielder, and this, Jayce realizes, must be how he and Mel survived the attack on the council unscathed. For a brief moment Jayce burns with jealousy.

A life wasted in pursuit of the magic, the very thing Mel now instinctively wields, and he never even managed to get it right. 

The puppet taps its golden fingertips up against the magical barrier, testing its strength. Mel’s hands tremble, muscles taut as she puts everything she has into keeping it up. It becomes immediately apparent that these powers are a recent discovery. That she has not had the time or the training to sustain her magic for long periods of time.

(The arcane stirs within you, Viktor murmurs, fascinated.) 

Viktor pushes the puppet’s fingers more firmly against the barrier, focused now, and it takes mere seconds for fingers to slip past. It is not a quick movement; the hand meets resistance as it forces its way through the barrier. Mel pushes back against Viktor with everything she has. Expels an extraordinary amount of magic. Her entire body shudders with the effort, and it’s clear that she won’t be able to hold out much longer.

Taking advantage of Viktor’s distraction, Jayce fires. The hit lands and the puppet stumbles backward, away from Mel. It turns its head slowly towards the source of the attack, zeroing in on Jayce. The golden barrier falls, magic dissipating with a flicker. Exhausted and no longer the focus of the puppet’s attention, Mel’s knees buckle and she drops to the floor.

(Viktor… stay away from the hexgates, Jayce warns. It’s futile, he knows it’s futile – Viktor is incapable of listening to reason at this point; the hexcore has been whispering poison in his ear for too long – but he has to try.)

He darts forward and swings his hammer down at Viktor. It lands heavily, crashing into the floor, avoided in a viper-like blur of motion. The puppet tracks Jayce with a detached sort of curiosity as he stumbles past, propelled forward by momentum. It reaches out with a flick of the wrist and shoves him with a strength belied by such a fragile looking exterior.

He crashes into the council table, a jolt arcing through his arm from where his elbow meets the rigid surface. Leans heavily against the table for a moment, trying to catch his breath and shake off the thousands of pins and needles prickling from his elbow to his fingertips.

(Your mind has become rigid, Jayce, Viktor tuts. Disapproving. Fear clouds your judgement. This chain of events started with you, he says. As if Jayce isn’t deeply, painfully aware that all of this is his fault.)

He glances back and spots Mel, sitting in a heap on the floor, breathing heavily from exertion. It’s become increasingly obvious that this is not a fight he can win on his own. He and Mel are going to need to work together, and she’s not currently in any state to rejoin the fray. He needs to buy more time.

Jayce pivots, swinging himself around and using the momentum to aim at the puppet. It jumps, impossibly fast, twisting its body in mid-air to brush cool metal fingers against his forehead as it passes. The light touch tingles – feels like millions of tiny electrical currents passing back and forth between his skin and their fingertips – and it is gone as quickly as it appeared. 

The puppet lands deftly on his back, solid and heavy, forcing the air from Jayce’s lungs. One arm winds its way around his neck to cup his jaw, gripping it just shy of too-tight. The other arm winds its way across his chest, pinning his arms beneath the porcelain limbs and locking him into place. The fingers curled around his jaw push, applying a gentle but steady pressure until his head is tilted as far back as it will go and he is forced to stare up at the sightless mask.

There is a tender sort of intimacy in being restrained so carefully after all of the times he has hurt Viktor. With words, with actions, with his absence. Maybe it feels particularly intimate because of this new history of violence between them. Even now, after everything he’s done, Viktor still holds him like he means something.

(Let us instead do this once again as partners, Viktor says. Jayce can almost swear that he sees Viktor, looking down at him from the puppet, clothed in galaxies and crowned in starlight. And gods, he would give anything for this to be real – for Viktor to be whole and healthy and looking at him with too much love in his eyes, asking Jayce to stay by his side. He would give anything to join Viktor once more; but this is not Viktor. Not here. Not yet. My partner died in this room, Jayce hisses up at the smooth porcelain mask. Confessing for the first time what he has always known to be true. What he buried deep in his soul and refused to think about. Viktor died here, in this room, well before Jayce pulled his cold body from the rubble.)

Jayce throws himself backwards, putting his full weight into the move and slamming the puppet into the edge of the desk. Its fingers open reflexively on impact. Jayce wrenches himself free, slipping from its grasp; he manages a single step forward before it’s back, spindly limbs winding tightly around him.

Jayce squirms in Viktor’s grip, but he’s held fast, locked into place. For the first time in years he’s not the strongest person in the room, and it’s unsettling. He rotates his wrist and jabs behind him with the butt of the hammer. It connects, smashing against the puppet’s face and knocking it backward.

It detaches from Jayce at last, leaping away, and Jayce follows, darting around the council table.

There, in the center of the room, they exchange blows in an increasingly one-sided dance. Jayce can’t hold out much longer, and he gets the distinct impression that Viktor knows. That he’s toying with him, pulling his punches and trying to wear Jayce down.

And it’s working; Jayce is weak from his time in the fissures, hasn’t had nearly enough time to recuperate. Viktor could very easily win the fight by dragging it out until Jayce’s body breaks down, or by attacking with his full strength. He does neither.

Instead, Vikor swings the puppet’s leg around, sweeping Jayce one more against the desk. He groans, the sharp edge biting into his spine with a crunch that Jayce feels more than he hears.

He tries to stand, but the puppet is already in front of him. One cool hand wraps around the base of his neck, pressing him backwards. His spine aches in protest. The other hand wraps around the shaft of the hammer and plucks it easily from his grasp. He reaches out frantically, trying to take his weapon back, but he grasps at nothing as Viktor holds it out of reach.

The hand around his throat tightens, metal warming in reaction to his body heat, and it lifts. Jayce’s feet leave the floor slowly, in increments. He kicks out uselessly. Trying to hit the puppet. Trying to gain purchase. But the puppet’s arms are too long and there is nothing within reach.

Static fills his head and buzzes through his ears like white noise. His throat aches beneath Viktor’s touch, air coming in too-short gasps. Jayce reaches up, hands scrabbling at the metal. Trying to pry the puppet’s grip open. The fingers tighten in retaliation, closing firmly around his windpipe and cutting off all air. 

Heat blooms across his face and spreads down his neck, hot and insistent as his lungs burn. Darkness encroaches, blanketing his vision and swallowing him whole as his hands fall limply to his side.

Everything fades away, dark and muted and distant. Like falling asleep.

A sound brushes ever so faintly against the dregs of his consciousness; a far-off shout and followed by a metallic crackle. A sharp smell that Jayce barely registers. A clang.

And then Jayce is on the ground, knees and palms aching, greedily drawing huge gulps of air into his lungs. His vision returns gradually, fading in, punctuated by the harsh, bright midday sunlight filtering in through the stained glass windows. He blinks rapidly, trying to dispel the stinging in his eyes. A few steps away Viktor’s puppet advances on Mel, movements lithe, like a predator moving in for the kill.

The sight sets alarm bells ringing in Jayce’s head. He spots his hammer on the ground nearby – dropped, he assumes – and lunges for it, bringing it up with trembling arms, and firing. Releasing her magic at the same time Mel raises the golden barrier once more, and the fire from Jayce’s hammer pins the puppet against it.

Pins, but doesn’t defeat. There isn’t a single scratch or dent that he can see on it in spite of his and Mel’s combined efforts. As if able to sense the direction of Jayce’s thoughts, it begins to move under the sustained attack. Trying to wriggle its way out.

Jayce shifts the hammer’s trigger to the cannon and fires a single, huge blast. It rips through the space between them and hits the puppet dead-on, the force of the impact rippling through its body. It falls heavily to the ground. There is one final shudder and the quiet hiss of air releasing from destroyed joints before it falls limp at last. Fluid seeps from the mask, rolling slowly down the side of its face like a tear.

Jayce slumps, exhausted and panting. 

A single puppet defeated; the victory rings hollow in the face of the cost.

Guards are called for and what remains of the current leadership is quickly summoned back from their lunch break. Mel and Jayce head outside as they wait for people to arrive, unwilling to remain in the council room. Unwilling to remain in a room with only a single, easily blocked escape route, although they don’t explicitly say as much. The sun shines brightly and though there is very little breeze, it is a pleasant enough day. It feels unnatural, this nice weather, in the face of what is to come.

As soon as Mel leans against the railing, he apologizes. Makes no excuses for his behavior. Doesn’t even try to explain himself. He was right earlier, when he told her it didn’t matter what had happened to him. Because it doesn’t. Nothing he’s been through excuses his behavior. He should never have raised his voice, should never have spat accusations. Especially not at Mel of all people, who has always treated him kindly. Has always uplifted and encouraged him. And he threw it all back in her face. His mother would be ashamed.

Jayce is ashamed.

(You’re hurting too, he says. It’s even clearer to see now that he’s not standing in the repaired council room, suffocated by the memories of smoke and rubble and blood. Mel has always held herself proudly, with poise and dignity – something he has tried to emulate over the years. Now there is a gravity to her, a heaviness that he has never seen before. Like she bears the weight of the world on her shoulders.)

She accepts his apology with a nod, moving past it with a grace that Jayce is thankful for, and tells him of everything that has transpired since they last saw one another; how she has spent a lifetime trying to live up to a name, a legacy, that was never truly hers. How lost she feels in her own skin. In her own life.

A passenger, Mel calls herself. Dictated to and dragged along on a ride she did not ask for, to a destination she cannot control. Her attempts to start something new, something for herself that will still make her mother proud, ultimately meaningless.

A life wasted.

It is an uncomfortably familiar refrain.

(I’ve been confused about a lot lately, Jayce says. His work. His place in the world, if there is such a thing. If there even should be such a thing. What it is he wants most and how far he is willing to go to get it. But there’s one thing I know in my bones. You will never be a passenger.)

There is no grand break up. No pretty words to soften hurt feelings. They were never officially together, so there is no official parting. But he can offer her the same encouragement that she has given him, because Mel has always been an incredible woman, and she will continue to be incredible long after he is gone. 

He hopes she finds a new purpose beyond the confinement of expectations and legacies, and that it brings her all of the happiness her mother has denied her.

Wishes, too, that he could be here to witness her impact on the world first-hand. It will be a sight to behold, he’s sure of it.

Representatives from every major Piltover house, and several representatives from Zaun, crowd into the council chambers. It would be an incredible sight under any other circumstances.

Viktor would laugh, the real one, deep from his chest that is just a little too loud and a little too honest, if he knew that he was the catalyst to finally bring the two together without even a hint of bloodshed.

(A storm is coming, Jayce warns. It’s dramatic, overly so, but it’s the only way to get the attention of the nobles. To force them to take this seriously. To take him seriously.)

He rips off the sheet covering the puppet, theatrically displaying the remains. The sight is met with a chorus of gasps as those closest take an involuntary step back, and those in the back crane their necks to catch a glimpse. Attention firmly on him, Jayce explains how much effort it took both him and Mel to defeat it, how close to death they came. And how there are hundreds more of these creatures on the way, led by Ambessa. It will be an unfair fight at best and a massacre at worst. Horror ripples through the room, quickly turning into furious whispers, and Jayce feels a grim sort of satisfaction.

Good. They should be afraid.

This is the last speech he will ever make, so Jayce pours everything he has into this warning of the oncoming war and plea for aid. Uses every bit of the persuasion that first won him funding and later turned him into a politician. He may not like the man he became, the man who made underhanded deals and ousted his mentor, but at least it gave him the skills to do this. To convince people of the seriousness of the situation. To convince them to run. To convince them to fight.

Both Piltover and Zaun are predominantly merchant cities, with no standing armies and no real battle experience. Few will join him in this suicide mission to save the place they call home – the majority of the populace couldn’t fight even if they wanted to, having no weapons and no training – but Jayce has to try.

(If you choose to flee, don’t stop running. Jayce looks around the room, making eye contact with as many individuals as he can. Some leave. Some avoid meeting his gaze. But some look right back at him, meeting him head-on. Refusing to flinch away from the reality of the situation. But I’m choosing to fight. And I pray that you will join me.)

Jayce does not ascribe to any religion. Does not pray to any of the gods. They exist, much like the elements. They are forces of nature. But one blizzard showed him that the gods do not care – do not intervene – for people like him.

He invokes the word of prayer amongst those gathered anyway. He is more than willing to pray to any god who will listen if it means that he can stop the oncoming army. If it means that he can save these cities, these people, from his hubris.

If it means that he can save Viktor from himself, just as Viktor has always saved him.

Discussions of next steps begin once the civilians have left and those thrust into leadership positions remain. The knowledge of just how little time they have to prepare against the invasion of an inhuman army settles heavily in the room, spurring everyone into action. Decisions are reached and orders dispatched with a swiftness that hasn’t been seen in living memory – there is simply no time for political bickering and bureaucratic red tape.

The bridge between the two cities is opened and border fences are brought down so that evacuations can begin immediately.

The lines of people fleeing the cities grow exponentially, snaking down winding streets and into alleyways, packed with families whose entire lives are crammed into too-small bags. Volunteers sign up to keep the trains running in shifts, ignoring normal operating hours and focusing on getting as many people loaded up and sent off as quickly as possible. Merchant ships open for passengers, shifting their cargo around and squeezing as many people aboard as weight limitations will allow.

The airships currently docked in Piltover are similarly filled to capacity and sent off. Once the final airship departs, the hexgates are closed down and barricaded. There is no telling when Ambessa will arrive on their doorstep or when Viktor will come for the anomaly, and no one is willing to risk a return voyage. 

It is fitting, Jayce thinks with dark amusement, that his greatest accomplishment will be the stage upon which he attempts to fix his greatest mistake.

(Viktor is not a mistake – could never be a mistake. Even here, at the end of the world, Jayce knows he would do it all again without even a second of hesitation, because the only other option is unthinkable. He can’t lose Viktor. Not if he has the ability to save him. But corrupting Viktor with the hexcore? Turning him into a mere player in some other force’s design? That is a mistake for which he will never forgive himself. Viktor should never be beholden to anyone or anything but himself.)

Jayce sends a note to his mother ahead of the official evacuation announcements. He heads for the Talis family home as soon as the strategy meetings conclude, waved on by an impatient Caitlyn. He doesn’t run, doesn’t want to incite any additional panic, but it’s a near thing.

Ximena flings the door open and meets him with a fierce hug that he sinks into gratefully. When she pulls back to look at him he can see the fear in her eyes, and no small amount of determination. But it is the overwhelming amount of love that undoes him.

He buries his face in her hair, eyes stinging, as she holds him tightly and tells him how proud she is of him. What a blessing he has been, her first and only child. How grateful she is to have been his mother. 

Ximena does not tell him to be safe. As a widow she knows that either he will return to her or he won’t, and she will have to carry on either way. Jayce blinks back the tears, wishing that he could promise that he’ll be back. But he has known from the beginning that this will be the end for him. He suspects she sees the truth of it in his eyes.

Instead of offering false promises he takes her hands in his – so small and fragile in comparison to his own rough, work-scarred hands –  and thanks her for taking care of him all these years. For loving him, fiercely and without reservation, even when he didn’t love himself.

Jayce picks up her bag, hefting it over his shoulder as Ximena locks up the house. The click of the deadbolt is loud, final, in the heavy silence. She presses her hand against the weathered oak door for what might be the last time. Exhales shakily. There is no guarantee that anything will even be here when she returns: not her house, not her things, not her son.

Jayce steps up to rub his mother’s shoulder soothingly and she turns to him with a fragile smile that he pretends not to notice. He offers her his arm and she takes it gratefully, giving his bicep an affectionate pat as they walk together towards the airships. 

(It’s not ‘goodbye’, mijito, Ximena says at the gate, eyes glossy with unshed tears as she cups his face in her hands. She stares at him for what they both know, deep down, will be the last time before pressing a final, tender kiss to his forehead. It’s ‘see you later’.)

He heads back to the council room where he meets back up with Caitlyn (It’s Viktor… isn’t it? she asks. He swallows heavily.) and what has effectively become her war council. They discuss strategies and contingencies for the upcoming fight, plans and backup plans that all boil down to the same thing: buying Jayce as much time as they can so he can bring down the hexgate. Or, failing that, take down Viktor.

Piltover buzzes with life, turning into a hive of frantic activity as they ready the city for invasion. A turret is hastily put together, created from the scraps of several other things, and welded to the hexgate. Smoke bombs and grenades are scrounged up from every conceivable location and dispersed amongst those who intend to fight. Defensive positions are established and weak points covered (or destroyed, in the case of one notable demolition of an outlying smuggler’s building that offered too many ways to sneak into Piltover).

They’re not ready – it would take more time than they have to truly be ready to fight an invading army, but they are as prepared as they can be.

It will have to be enough.

Jayce heads into the depths of the hexgates as soon as he finishes with the turret and begins the arduous task of disengaging each individual power cell by hand. They had never developed a simpler way to shut down the hexgate – he and Viktor had considered it, had created an entire list of the pros and cons, but had ultimately decided that having that much power in one central location could be dangerous – and Jayce finds himself swearing creatively at his past self.

Turn counterclockwise to disengage the lock, push in until the core clicks and then pull it out.  Turn, push, pull. Over, and over, and over again.

Jayce falls into a steady rhythm, losing himself in the repetitive motion. Tries to ignore the erratic beat of his heart. It’s only a matter of time before Viktor shows up and they’re face to face once more. What should he say? What should he do? Turn, push, pull.

He’s close to the end, has only a couple dozen left to deactivate, when a sizzling sound has him looking up from the power cell in hand. It’s as out of place as it is familiar, calling to mind late nights in the lab, protective goggles that make Viktor look like a jewel-eyed bug, and welding scrap metal together to create prototypes. 

Jayce scans the room for the source, eyes catching on the vibrant orange glow of heated metal. It cuts slowly, easily, across the door. Up and then back down, slicing through the thick, reinforced metal like butter. There is only one person in Piltover and Zaun combined with the ability to break into this chamber like it’s nothing. 

Jayce speeds up, moving as quickly as he can (turn, push, pull) as the sound of the laser hums throughout the room. A small tremor shakes his hands in equal parts fear and anticipation. He is out of time. Viktor is here.

Silence descends for a single, blessed moment. A lull that offers a false sense of security; the reassurance that the invasion is halted. Then there is a heavy clang as the cut-out metal crashes to the ground. The door is destroyed, gutted, leaving only a giant hole.

Viktor steps through.

Jayce makes the mistake of glancing up at the noise and catching sight of him. He knew that Viktor would be changed, had been warned this was going to happen by the other Viktor, but no amount of words could have prepared him for the man – creature? – currently prowling towards him with the easy confidence of a predator who knows they’re the strongest thing in the room.

He swallows thickly.

Viktor is tall – at least a head taller than Jayce now. The purple arcane metal has spread to encompass the entirety of Viktor’s body. A mask (attached? fused?) now sits high atop his face, eyes glowing an intense, bright gold. He is wreathed in arcane symbols, floating in a constantly-shifting pattern that Jayce itches to study. His staff has changed too, growing longer to match Viktor’s increased height, and it taps gently across the floor as Viktor approaches.

And there, draped across his shoulders now instead of across his body, is the blanket from their lab. The blanket Jayce wrapped him with upon waking, and again upon death. Jayce’s heart thunders in his chest, pulse pounding loudly in his ears. Only you, he thinks. In all possibilities. Only you.

“Despite the circumstances, Jayce,” Viktor’s voice reverberates through him, distorted through the mask and imbued with the stolen voices of his ascended. “I am… pleased to see you.” Even here at the end of everything, both changed over the last several months by trauma and circumstance, it is still affection that holds them together. 

It would be easier if he could ignore Viktor, let the words roll off him without a response, but that is something Jayce had never been able to do. “I’m sure there’s some part of you still in there,” he says, hands working furiously at disabling the power cells. There are less than ten left – he’s almost made it.

An explosion rocks the hexgate and Jayce startles, glancing briefly upwards, before he risks looking back at Viktor. A fissure of awareness runs through his body as Viktor continues his languid approach. Some long-forgotten primal instinct pumps adrenaline through Jayce’s veins in the face of this dangerous entity and the desire to flee is overwhelming.

He ignores the feeling, trembling imperceptibly as he pushes his muscles to keep moving, to keep working as they try to seize up. Ignores the lull of Viktor’s distorted voice as he describes the ways in which his plans will bring an end to cruelty and injustice. He focuses solely on pulling the power cells from the core of the hexgate, working at a now-feverish pace until – 

At last he pulls the last one free and disables it, powering down the final section of the hexgate. With the power cells rendered inert, the hum of energy disappears and darkness descends. In the pitch-black Viktor’s halo of arcane runes shine even brighter, throwing the sharp planes of his mask into stark relief. 

“We can be of one mind.” Vikor pauses. Even through the distortion Jayce can hear the pride, the excitement at what Viktor clearly considers to be his latest breakthrough.  “United.” The runes flare brightly, moving and shifting, creating a new series of complex patterns in the air before freezing abruptly. It pulses, and a blinding flash shoots out from Viktor, blanketing the room. All of the power cores slam back into place and the hexgate hums back to life.

Gods. Of course.

Jayce clenches his teeth as he looks around incredulously. All of his work, undone in seconds. It’s not like they hadn’t considered the possibility of this happening; the other Viktor had obviously been capable of great magic, so naturally it would follow that their Viktor would have at least some part of that ability? And sure enough, here he is, wielding magic like he’d been born into it.

Still, it’s an unfortunate setback.

“Stop this insanity, Viktor.” Jayce pleads, turning towards him. “Please.” His voice cracks at the end and he lets out a shuddering exhale. It’s not too late, he thinks, we can stop Ambessa together. We can leave, start over somewhere else where no one knows us. It doesn’t have to be like this.

As much as he wants to deny it, they’ve moved well beyond the point where mere words can reach Viktor. The hexcore has had too much time to spew its poison, too much time to convince Viktor of the rightness of his current course.

He swallows his pleas, burying them deep in his heart.

Not now. Not yet.

Viktor approaches, ignoring Jayce’s request in favor of ascending the few steps that separate them. Jayce freezes. His breath hiccups, stuttering to a halt as Viktor draws parallel to him and pauses. The blanket brushes softly against Jayce’s arm, just a whisper of contact. Every hair raises.

Danger, his body screams as it locks him firmly in place. Viktor does not turn, does not look at him, but Jayce can feel the scrutiny all the same. Danger, his brain screams and he holds as still as humanly possible, unable to draw in a breath.

Viktor steps forward, out of Jayce’s periphery, and the spell is broken. He inhales greedily, filling his burning lungs with large gulps of air, and turns to watch Viktor.

Dread coalesces into a pit in his stomach as Viktor halts before the core of the hexgate. The universe shifts – or perhaps just his perception – and suddenly they’re standing in the abyss. The anomaly looms before them, giant and alien and infinite, where the heart of the hexgate had previously stood. 

“Your eyes won’t lie when your mind is open, Jayce.” Viktor says, gently, graciously, as if he is bestowing all of the world’s wisdom upon Jayce. It probably seems that way to Viktor. Puppets cannot argue, after all.

Jayce steps forward, an impulsive move born from the knowledge he must do something before Viktor gains control of the anomaly, but he’s pulled up short when Viktor reaches out and plucks it from the air. The anomaly shrinks down in his grasp until it fits neatly in the palm of Viktor’s hand, and he puts it into the hollow point at top of his staff.

It slots into place easily, as if it was meant to be there all along.

The energy in the air changes, becoming charged. Heavy. A physical, almost tangible thing. Like the build up right before a lightning strike, punctuated by the familiar smell of ozone. Distracted, Jayce doesn’t notice as his soles lift slowly off the ground. It’s only when he realizes that Viktor is floating that he discovers he is, too.

Jayce looks down at the ground, slowly drifting further and further away, and then back towards Viktor in wonder. It’s not meant for him; he knows he is merely ensnared by magics that Viktor cannot yet wield with the same precision as his alternate counterpart. But right here, in this moment, Jayce is once again entranced by the beauty of the arcane.

He’s reminded of the last time he found himself weightless, drifting through the air with Viktor. Smiling so hard his cheeks hurt. Passing a cog back and forth through the newly-stabilized crystal. Young and reckless and full of endless possibilities. 

He cannot change the past, but with any luck he will be able to change the future.

Viktor takes off like a shot, flying upwards towards the top of the hexgate with single-minded purpose. A few experimental kicks make it obvious that Jayce does not possess the ability to follow Viktor on his own, and it’s only a matter of time before the residual magic drops him back to the ground. Unwilling to be left behind, he positions the corrupted Mercury Hammer beneath him and holds down the trigger for the cannon.

The force of the sustained blast swiftly propels Jayce up into the air and he doggedly follows after Viktor, straining to catch up. They shoot through the hexgem-lined amplification tunnel, the gemstones humming to life as they pass, charged instantly with Viktor’s raw magic. 

Jayce releases another blast of the cannon, bridging the distance that separates them, and, in a fit of desperation, swings the hammer at Viktor. It looks like the hit is actually going to land, Viktor laser-focused on their destination and paying him no mind, until the hexclaw moves of its own volition, knocking the hammer away with ease.

Viktor finally deigns to look at him as Jayce stares, incredulous. Gravity takes hold and his stomach leaps into his throat as he begins to fall, no longer propelled upwards by Viktor’s magic or the amplified blast power of the corrupted Mercury Hammer. Several emotions crash through him in a wave: terror, hopelessness. Devastation, that this is how it all ends. That Viktor will watch him fall to his death, unmoved, and then forget he ever was here. A footnote in their story.

A hand reaches out, curling cold metal fingers firmly around the base of Jayce’s throat and drags him up. It is an increasingly familiar sensation and he winces as pressure is applied to the fresh, tender bruises. It’s not a gentle gesture; Jayce is lifted as high as Viktor’s arm can reach, and once more he finds himself digging his fingers into the hand wrapped around his throat in a futile attempt to alleviate some of the pressure.

But as their eyes meet, Jayce realizes that Viktor isn’t squeezing this time. There is no force being applied directly to his windpipe, no immediate danger of unconsciousness. He’s just… being held aloft. Prevented from plummeting to his death, as Viktor flies them up, up, up.

The hexclaw fires, ripping Jayce violently from his musing as he jerks his head to the side to avoid the steady beam of the laser. He gapes at Viktor, eyes wide with disbelief, but the man has shifted his attention to something behind Jayce. It takes a second for him to understand that the laser isn't actually aimed at him – he dodged the beam easily and Viktor hasn’t made any attempt to move it – but at whatever Viktor is staring at just beyond his head.

A percussive blast shakes the hexgate and debris rains down on Jayce’s back. The hand around his neck drops away, releasing him abruptly, and he’s free-falling for the second time today. The ground is hard and unforgiving, and Jayce lands heavily with a hoarse shout of pain as his injured leg slams into the top of the hexgate. He crumples instantly on impact.

Jayce lays there in a heap, dazed. Every inch of skin feels battered, bruised. The last few months have been unkind to his body and the last few days unkinder still. He exhales slowly through clenched teeth, gathers his will and pushes himself up onto his knees and forearms. Breathes heavily, winded by the exertion and stares at the ground beneath his palms, cracked and damaged by the elements. By Viktor’s blast.

When Jayce finally finds the strength to look up he is immediately blinded. He squints, raising a hand to block out some of the harsh glare. It’s sunlight, he realizes, reflecting off the gold and porcelain exterior of what looks like thousands of puppets, standing in neat lines. Surrounding him as far as the eye can see.

And every single one of them is facing him. Upon noticing his scrutiny their heads tilt to the side in perfect unison. The result is… uncanny. As if he is a specimen, and they’re observing him. 

An alarmed wheeze is all he can muster through his aching throat. The instinct to fall back into a defensive position is strong, but the sharp throbbing in his leg prevents any immediate attempts to stand. Not that there is anywhere he could run to, nor is he in any shape to try to take on even a single puppet by himself, much less the thousands currently surrounding him.

They watch him, perfectly still. Jayce squirms in discomfort underneath the deeply unsettling scrutiny, the instinctual desire to flee rising growing with each passing moment. Then the puppets turn their heads as one up towards the sky. Like porcelain sunflowers, Jayce thinks half-hysterically. He turns, stretching his legs out to alleviate some of the ache, and leans back onto his palms, following their gaze.

Viktor ascends high into the sky above, eyes glowing a bright, luminescent orange that burns straight through his mask and pins Jayce to the ground. 

The Herald, his followers had called him. A fitting title, because Viktor is magnetic. Radiant. “Do you see? The sublime intersection of order and chaos.”

Viktor lifts up his staff and the anomaly within pulses, once, twice, before ascending, a dazzling beacon of prismatic light. 

As it disappears into the clouds and out of sight, the atmosphere rapidly begins to change. The wind picks up, growing from a whisper of a breeze into gale force winds within seconds. The clouds grow dark, heavy. They begin rotating in the sky, building and growing and flashing with a familiar sickly green light. The arcane storm, no longer a distant, future threat but here, now.

The anomaly expands within the clouds. Grows at an exponential rate until it encompasses the storm completely, swallowing it whole. And then it bursts in a blinding flash of light – sending a massive shockwave of arcane energy rippling outwards, away from the eye of the storm, corrupting everything it touches.

The land, devastated in mere seconds.

Jayce drags himself on scraped hands and bruised knees towards his fallen Mercury Hammer. He grabs the shaft and uses it to pull himself up onto his knees. Lightning shoots through his kneecap, radiating up through his thigh and down to his toes. He winces. Scans the horizon for any sign of Viktor.

There is none, he has vanished without a trace, but what remains punches the air out of Jayce. The familiar, sickly storm. The arcane corruption, sweeping across the land in broad strokes, laying siege to everyone and everything in sight.

So this is it, the beginning of the end. This is how it starts. 

The hairs on the back of Jayce’s neck rise and awareness washes over him. He knows with absolute certainty that Viktor has joined him. Can feel his presence in the marrow of his bones and the depths of his soul. He tightens his grip on the hammer, exhaling slowly. Bows his head in supplication – a perfect replica of the other Jayce. 

In all timelines, Jayce thinks as his eyes flutter shut. In all possibilities. Only you. 

Viktor gently presses the pads of his fingers into Jayce’s forehead. The metal is cool to the touch, a balm against his overheated skin. Viktor does not shy away as he did in the council chamber, does not move to take hold of Jayce’s jaw, and Jayce leans into the touch. Every point of contact between Viktor’s fingers and Jayce’s skin tingles, like thousands of tiny electric sparks, and the feeling spreads throughout Jayce’s body. It doesn’t hurt; instead, it feels like he is being filled with effervescence. Like millions of tiny bubbles are fizzling in his veins.

There is a gentle pull on his soul that feels both strange and familiar, and Jayce follows it easily, willingly, slipping from his body and joining Viktor in the abyss.

Jayce awakens with a gasp, disoriented, and finds himself in what appears to be the very cosmos itself, stretching on for eternity in every direction, painted with smudges of rainbow-hued galaxies and whorls of starlight. Here, in the vastness of space and time, where creation itself can be cradled in the palm of a hand, everything seems possible. Every question, answerable.

Jayce finds himself surrounded by thousands – no, millions – of golden souls, linked by beautiful golden threads, spooling out in all directions. A tapestry of lives, plucked from the physical realm and woven into the very fabric of the universe.

“This is what you see?” Jayce asks, eyes wide in disbelief. In awe.

He turns, and it is a shock to his system.

There Viktor floats, looking every bit like a relief, deserving of praise and worship. Because here in the celestial realm he is a god; immense beyond mortal comprehension, cloaked in power and crowned in authority, resplendent and terrifying in equal measure. 

“I know their minds, Jayce.” Viktor says softly, sounding more like himself. His voice still pierces directly through Jayce’s heart, but the resonance of souls is absent. There is no need of them here. “They want better lives, but emotion clashes with reason.” He pauses for a second, and Jayce can feel the full weight of his scrutiny, a physical, tangible thing pinning him in place. “Humanity’s self-corrupting contradiction.”

It has never been as clear as it is in this moment why people turn to gods in times of need or desperation. Viktor is ethereal and eternal, unbound by the limitations of mere mortals. Offering a complete end to suffering with the benevolent raise of a palm. Telling Jayce that he too can lay down his burdens, if only he gives himself over to Viktor.

The full weight of Viktor’s presence slams into him, pulling to the forefront the devotion he has always possessed. The adoration. Viktor has been everything to Jayce from the very moment he stepped into the ruins of Jayce’s workshop, all soft accent and gentle ribbing and praise. The first person to ever see Jayce, to really see him and his work. To believe in him. How could he possibly have done anything other than immediately fall headlong in love, carving out a special place for Viktor in his heart, and later, in his very soul?

It is the memory of the other Viktor that keeps him on course. Older, wiser, and so very alone. Carefully tending to his Jayce – the only puppet, he had realized, to retain any hint of facial features – even as he disintegrates. The way he had placed his hand on puppet-Jayce’s shoulder had been such an easy motion, born of familiarity. How frequently had he come to visit his Jayce over the years? How long had it taken for that small, intimate touch to become second nature?

Would his Viktor also stand guard over his remains as he crumbles into dust? Would he talk to him? Explain all of life's mysteries, all of the answers to questions they had never even thought to ask? Visit him so often that physical affection that had never come easy to him becomes effortless?

He doesn’t want to find out.

“You’ve always wanted to cure what you thought were weaknesses.” Jayce begins gently. “Your leg.” He pauses, staring down at his hands as they shift between human and ethereal, hoping he has enough time to get through to Viktor. “Your disease.” The colors dance, prismatic and beautiful. Unnatural.

He pushes on. “But you were never broken, Viktor. There is beauty in imperfections.” He exhales shakily as he tries to gather his racing thoughts. “They made you who you are. An inseparable piece of everything…” Jayce chokes, heart in his throat as he looks up at Viktor. Terrible. Immense. Beautiful. “I admired about you.”

But Viktor’s attention has shifted away from him, captured by the tiniest flicker of green light. Without Viktor actively tethering him to reality he begins to drift, going soft around the edges of his soul. And slowly, as he starts to integrate, he discovers he can feel the others around him.

Where Jayce ends and everyone else begins starts to blur. He is sobbing in the middle of a snowstorm, tears freezing on his cheeks, pleading desperately for his mother as frostbite nips at his fingertips through his mittens. He is at the innovator’s convention, arm slung affectionately about Viktor’s shoulders, drunk on their win and full of hope. He is a young woman, laughing with a friend and pressing closer in their shared seat, wondering if tonight she will finally confess her feelings. He is a child, hungry and cold, huddled in the grime-encrusted doorstep and coughing wetly into their hand.

“That device cannot be.” The words are faint, meaningless.

A groom on his wedding day, brimming with love and dreams of a large family. A grandfather, rocking his grandchild to sleep with the contentment of a life well-lived. A child playing in the chem-runoff, splashing the other children if they get too close and barking out peals of laughter. That same child, grown now, body cannibalising itself from the inside out. A woman, harried, walking quickly — 

Jayce inhales. Blinks. Something happened, but he’s not quite sure what.

It doesn’t matter. He is running out of time.

“I thought I wanted us to give magic to the world.” Jayce continues, ruefully. A foolishly idealistic plan rooted in childhood wonder and stubborn determination. He had been so tired of being told that it was impossible, that he was wasting his time, his potential on a fool’s errand, that any deviation from that plan had become unthinkable. 

And in clinging to that need to spread magic for so long, he failed to see what really mattered. His family. His friends.

Viktor.

“Now, all I want…” Jayce hesitates. It’s absurd to have come so far and falter here, of all places. But there is terror in being vulnerable, in exposing the most fragile parts of yourself and letting yourself be known. In all possibilities, he reminds himself, and looks at Viktor, standing before him and missing half of his mask. A single amber eye peeks out, beautifully, devastatingly human. Jayce smiles at him, at once scared and hopeful. “Is my partner back.”

“Why do you persist?” Viktor asks, divested of his divinity and looking up at him for the first time since Jayce wrapped that blanket around his shoulders in their lab. Confused. “After everything I’ve done?”

The question rips straight through his heart. Jayce will spend the rest of his life, however short that may be, atoning for being so self-absorbed that Viktor cannot fathom the depths to which Jayce will go for him. 

“Because I promised you.” Jayce says, reaching for Viktor. He doesn’t flinch away from the contact, doesn’t fight him or tell him to stop. Jayce takes that as tacit permission, wrapping his arms around Viktor’s narrow shoulders and pulling him into his embrace. He holds him tightly, buries his face in the curve of Viktor’s neck, and opens his mind.

He shows Viktor the other timeline. The crumbling, hollowed-out remains of the cities and the people. Shows himself at the top of the hexgate, in front of his own remains, demanding answers. The mage turning towards Jayce, and it’s Viktor standing there, looking at Jayce like he’s something precious. Viktor, who has saved his life in every way imaginable. Who took a chance on him, believed in him when no one else would.

Viktor, who said In all timelines, in all possibilities, only you can show me this.

Who asked the impossible of him.

In his arms Viktor’s breathing grows shaky. It’s too much all at once. Overwhelmed, Viktor pushes against Jayce’s chest, twisting out of his grasp. He hunches over, hands on his knees, shuddering through heavy breaths. Fully human for the first time since Jayce lost him.

Viktor’s eyes dart about wildly, taking in their surroundings for the first time as just himself. The galaxies, swirling languidly. The dusting of constellations. The golden web of souls that stretch out into infinity, suspended in a perpetual stasis. They are still linked in mind and soul and Jayce can feel Viktor’s despair rising like a tidal wave, threatening to drown him. To drag him under and sink him in the depths.

All of humanity, all of creation, right here at Viktor’s fingertips. And look at what he has done to it. Stolen lives and blighted the land.

“You must go, Jayce.” Viktor voice wavers, cracking mid-sentence.

Jayce places his hand on Viktor’s shoulder, gently, so very gently, so as not to startle him. It has been less than a minute that they’ve been reunited, properly reunited without the taint of the hexcore, and Jayce is already unable to stop himself from constantly reaching out to Viktor. Wanting to touch him. To reassure himself that this is real, that Viktor is real. Viktor turns toward him with tired, defeated eyes.

Jayce digs his fingers into the incorporeal flesh of his wrist, pulling free the rune embedded there by the other Viktor. Uses his free hand to gently clasp Viktor’s wrist and lifts it up between them. He places the rune in Viktor’s hand, curling the long, delicate fingers closed around it, and covers it with his own.

“We finish this together.” He says firmly, leaving no room for argument. Viktor looks down at the rune held jointly between them, then back up at Jayce. Hesitant. They both know how this ends – it would be impossible at this point not to – and Viktor is clearly unwilling to drag Jayce along with him.

As if there is anywhere Viktor could possibly go that Jayce would not willingly follow. He doesn’t need to be safe; to be shielded and protected. He just needs Viktor.

The rune in their hands grows, expanding rapidly and silencing any token protests that might have been voiced. It pulses violently, and Viktor’s hand shakes beneath Jayce’s own from the force of magic being expelled. It pulses again, releasing another blast of magic but this time the impact is even stronger and it pushes Jayce away, sending him flying backwards.

Panicked, he reaches out for Viktor, fighting his way back to his partner through the increasingly powerful magical shockwaves until he’s able to wrap his hand once more around Viktor’s. Their eyes meet and there is a tenderness, an openness in Viktor’s gaze that Jayce had never thought he would see again. He cards his free hand through Viktor’s hair – no longer the color of starlight but a beautiful, familiar brown – and cups the back of his neck, pulling him closer. Presses their foreheads together.

I love you, Jayce thinks fiercely. You are everything to me, the other half of my soul. I want to spend every lifetime by your side, in whatever way you will have me. 

Viktor pulls back and looks at him in astonishment. Searches his face until amber eyes soften at the devotion he finds there. “Ah,” Viktor says with a quiet huff of laughter, “what fools we’ve been.” He raises his free hand and cups Jayce’s jaw, using the barest hint of pressure to tilt his head, and kisses him.

It feels like benediction. Like coming home.

In Piltover, high atop the battle-damaged hexgate, the corrupted Mercury Hammer crumbles to dust and scatters in the wind.

The only thing that remains is a single, smooth piece of honey calcite.